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Restart of Fairmont brine recycling plant delayed to September

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Fairmont Brine Processing's planned spring re-opening of a shuttered gas industry wastewater recycling facility in Fairmont has been delayed, but still is in process.

"We are now looking at a potential restart date of approximately September 2013," said John Schmitt of Fairmont Brine affiliate Venture Engineering.

AOP Clearwater started commercial operation of its brine recycling plant in Fairmont in November 2009.

The plant recycled wastewater by putting it through a number of processes: settling, filtration, and multi-phase evaporation.

But the facility soon experienced an unmanageable level of corrosion, company President Louis Bonasso told The State Journal at the time. The company shut it down before it had operated for a year.

Venture Engineering of Pittsburgh, which had been a vendor at the site and helped with start-up, still saw potential. Its affiliate Fairmont Brine bought the facility in early 2012.

At the time, Schmitt said the company would replace the evaporator equipment that is the heart of the operation and hoped to start back up in the spring of 2013.

That restart is delayed by a few months.

"We are close to closing on our funding for the project, and hoping to be able to close by the end of this month," Schmitt said on Feb. 7.

A lot of the engineering work is done, he said. Equipment will be ordered once the financing is in place.