Briefing: A critical reappraisal of quantifying energy consumption during electroosmotic dewatering

Energy consumption during electroosmotic dewatering (EOD) represents the cornerstone of assessing the financial viability of this method for widespread adoption, including implementation in large-scale field applications. Given the significance of this parameter, the available methods for EOD energy consumption, in retrospect, are somewhat incomplete. This paper first discusses the existing methods of interpreting EOD energy consumption and their limitations. This is followed by presenting an alternative approach for interpreting unambiguous values of energy consumption rates during EOD, evaluating the approach by applying it to EOD experiments of various tailings materials and finally comparing the results with prominent case histories. One of the key limitations associated with the existing methods of reporting EOD energy consumption is that they do not incorporate the response of the material being dewatered to the treatment process. To address this issue, the proposed method takes the liquidity index variation into account, thereby enabling the interpretation of energy consumption to provide a unit change in liquidity index for a given unit of dry tailings. Compared to currently available metrics, the proposed approach provides a better indication of the extent of dewatering achieved with respect to kWh utilised.