Mineral Development (MDL) Secondary Recovery Plant Project

Mineral Development LLC (“MDL”) is a special purpose company formed to design, construct, finance, operate, and maintain a plant and mine operation that will recover, process, and sell high-quality phosphate from secondary tailings left at the old Noralyn phosphate mine site in central Florida.

Central Florida is one of the richest phosphate mining regions in the world. Mining has taken place on a large scale in this region throughout the 1900s and continues to this day. Tailings, effectively residual rock from the initial extraction process, were deposited in the cut mines, and due to both the outdated technology and abundance of new deposits at the time, significant excess phosphate was left in deposited tailings. As part of the Project, the mined land will be environmentally reclaimed to its natural state.

Design features

The MDL Secondary Recovery Plant Project will recover phosphate by surface mining previously mined phosphate tailing areas.  Energy efficient dual extraction columns are utilized to separate the phosphate from the sand. Remaining sand is then either pumped back out for use in the land reclamation, or it can be sold as a useable byproduct.

Innovations

The Project utilizes innovative float technology to recover saleable phosphate from previous mine tailings, in a highly energy efficient process.