Particularly platinum mines need to clean up their mining act if they are to uphold their credibility as the miners of products that keep the world’s air clean.
Keeping the air of major global cities clean but dirtying the air of local communities is just not on.
This penny must be made to drop more firmly across a broad front and each time journalists put clean-mine questions to the management of platinum group metals (PGMs) mines, they need to reflect on whether any improvements are being made.
There is growing PGMs mining-industry acknowledgement that something has to be done and in doing an emission clean-up at PGMs mines, that know-how generated could easily be migrated to all other mines, which the environmental authorities should demand.
One of the amazing possibilities is the harnessing of clean-up energy from the very muck and mess that mines have created and left behind for others to sort out.
For example, acid mine drainage – that water replete with residues of hard rock blasting – can be turned into hydrogen using electrolysers that, in turn, use PGMs, which, again, makes PGMs producers potential market-demand beneficiaries of their clean-up moves.
The hydrogen produced by electrolysers can, in turn, be used in fuel cells, which require PGMs as catalysts to generate clean mobility for currently air-polluting mine trucks, shovels and equipment.
As a clean and sustainable energy carrier, which produces no emissions except water, hydrogen has the potential to become a universal energy carrier, in the same way that oil is now, but without the environmental impact.
Acid mine water, seawater and brackish water are all being eyed for hydrogen production. Innovative South African company Hydrox Holdings has developed a new membrane-free technology aimed at bringing electrolysis down the cost curve.
Its objective is to produce hydrogen below R100/kg, making it cost competitive with petrol. The intention is to make hydrogen readily accessible to the public by adopting the single-pump model pioneered at filling stations by Sasol in its early days.
‘Green’ hydrogen is generally produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in electrolysers that use platinum catalysts.
South Africa’s superior sunshine, prime wind, land resources and platinum abundance put it in pole position to produce competitive renewable energy and use it to produce clean hydrogen; 95% of hydrogen is currently obtained from fossil fuel sources, resulting in the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Platinum and palladium are under threat from antidiesel sentiment and battery electric vehicle uptake. South Africa needs to move vigorously into the hydrogen economy in tandem with China, Japan, South Korea, Germany and California in the interests of local wealth creation and job generation. Relying excessively on autocatalysis, which is being hurt by antidiesel sentiment and battery electric vehicle advances, will not even preserve platinum mining’s 167 000 job complement.