Remember this great Challenge, the Brine Challenge, from K+S, a German chemical company headquartered in Kassel and Europe’s largest supplier of potash?

The K+S Brine Challenge focused on exploring innovative approaches and concepts to significantly reduce the saline wastewater from the tailings piles.

Ideas were submitted by scientists, companies, institutes, students as well as non-professionals from 16 countries.

The jury of external and K+S internal experts has now awarded EUR 20,000 each to the two best proposals out of a total of more than 40 ideas submitted. The two winners are:

• Kevin Joback, engineer from Bedford (New Hampshire), USA
• Thomas Baumgartl, scientist from Churchill (Victoria), Australia

Mr. Joback suggests to further reduce the brine formation by applying a special polymer. Mr. Baumgartl’s idea involves coating the tailings piles with water-repellent materials.

Check out this video for more details or get the K+S Press Release.

Credit:

The picture of the News Announcement in the Home Page of this website was taken by Wolkenkratzer. No change has been made. The picture is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.