“GSAe welcomes the opportunity to develop relationships with clients looking to reduce the environmental impact of their waste streams, with a particular focus on metals recovery. We feel that there is a real potential for collaboration on future schemes with producers, refiners and processors, to commercially recover valuable metals to benefit both the client and the environment. This all began due to the relationships the GSA founders made while working for BP.

GSAe developed its primary expertise in metals extraction during the mid 1990’s working with Orbit Metallurgical Limited (OML), a joint venture between PDVSA and Stractor. The remit began with an audit of an existing design that had been prepared for an operating plant to extract vanadium and nickel from ash originating from Orimulsion fueled power stations. The need to extract these metals from the ash was due to their toxic nature making disposal not environmentally viable.

During this audit, the client was impressed by the up-to-date engineering knowledge and the ability to develop new ideas which reduced the overall investment, both in cost and time. Key to this was the ability to look across industries to new approaches, by using this skill we found a site that benefited the JV by providing land, steam, abundant reagents and a sea outfall. The project was reassigned and we began the engineering phases from FEED and took the project through to commissioning.

Having no engineering capabilities of their own, OML were provided with plant based engineers and project engineering support over all disciplines when the plant went into full production. The process was developed and optimised as funds allowed.

Dr Andrew Grimley took over as managing director of OML and Matthew Grimley, who had been a site based engineer for some years, became plant manager. GSAe took overall ownership of the facility in 2003.With the historic knowledge of the process and its capabilities, coupled with a wider engineering understanding we were able to adapt the plant for different feeds and to provide vanadium and nickel compounds at increased purities. The ownership of the plant also means GSAe has valuable knowledge in designing, building, and operating an extraction plant along with trading chemical products and sourcing feedstocks.

Since operating a metals extraction plant, GSAe has moved into developing the technology for a range of feedstocks and customizing engineering designs to provide the best solution for our clients.