Australia?s ECT to run coal dewatering plant in E. Kalimantan

Australian firm Environmental Clean Technologies Limited (ECT) announced on Tuesday that it has signed a Heads of Agreement (HoA) for the establishment of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with Alexis Minerals International Pty Ltd (AMI), to construct a plant for the production of 10 million tonnes per annum of Coldry (Black Coal Equivalent) over the next 30 years.

Coldry is claimed to be the world?s first economic method for dewatering brown coal, creating a high energy pellet with significantly reduced CO2 emissions compared to brown coal. The pellet is suitable for export as a black coal substitute.

AMI holds rights for extensive low rank coal (LRC) reserves in East Kalimantan. The reserves exhibit high levels of moisture and responded successfully to Coldry production trials and independent testing earlier this year, the company claimed.

The agreement provides for ECT to contribute access to its Coldry intellectual property, plant designs and expertise, and for AMI to contribute sufficient coal reserves as well as a suitable plant location in Indonesia for the project, the company said.

Both parties will contribute sufficient resources to the SPV to commence the preparation on an Investment Memorandum to attract further investment to fund a formal feasibility study.

The feasibility study is expected to be completed before the end of Q4 2010, it said.

AMI?s director of the project Leslie Pereira said ?We are very keen to explore the value adding opportunity Coldry technology represents. Coldry will allow us to improve the economic value associated with our coal reserves through dewatering, and provide a more competitive Black Coal Equivalent to address our target markets of neighboring South East Asian countries such as China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.?

Alexis is an Australian-based, privately owned joint venture company focused on coal exploration and mining in East Kalimantan. Alexis currently has five mining concessions in its portfolio.

In March 2009, ECT announced it had reached agreement with Indonesian coal firm Ilthabi Bara Utama (IBU) run a Coldry test on low ranked coal samples from IBU?s coal mine in East Kalimantan. (denny)