The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
New formula lowers costs of gold leaching cyanide alternative Metal Tech News - November 22, 2023
During field tests carried out in 2020, the EnviroMetal formula recovered 93.2% of the gold from two metric tons of high-grade concentrates at the 3 Aces project in Canada's Yukon.
Testing over the past three years has shown that EnviroMetal Technologies Inc.'s proprietary formula offers an environmentally sound alternative to cyanide for leaching gold from high-grade ore, concentrates, and recycled electronics. A new breakthrough by the British Columbia-based company could make this non-cyanide gold leaching process an option for operations with lower-grade ore and concentrates.
"We are extremely encouraged with our latest breakthrough; it has the potential to drastically reduce the key cost of our simple gold recovery solution, an obvious benefit for miners seeking sustainable gold recovery and an improved bottom line," said EnviroMetal Technologies President and CEO Wayne Moorhouse. "The ability to economically process lower grade ores and concentrates also significantly expands EnviroMetal's potential market."
EnviroMetal's innovative gold recovery technology uses a blend of five ingredients that individually are FDA-approved for human consumption but together can dissolve gold. Once in solution, the gold can be recovered with a diamond-based electrochemical process developed by the company.
According to tests carried out in 2021 by world-leading testing and inspection firm SGS, the EnviroMetal formula outperformed cyanide on high-grade ore samples from a Canadian gold mine.
A one-gram-per-liter concentration of the EnviroMetal formula recovered 99.6% of the gold from a 675-grams-per-metric-ton sample in just six hours, compared to 93.9% recovery in 24 hours with the same concentration of cyanide.
Using the same concentrations, the EnviroMetal formula recovered 92.5% of the gold in six hours from flotation concentrates averaging 55.1 g/t gold, compared to 93.5% over 30 hours with cyanide.
In addition to superior recoveries from the high-grade ore and comparable recoveries from the concentrate sample, the EnviroMetal process began leaching the gold out of these samples much quicker than cyanide.
Following the testing by SGS, testing carried out on material from P2 Gold Inc.'s Gabbs gold-copper project in Nevada returned roughly 90% gold recoveries from much lower-grade samples averaging 0.72 and 1.45 g/t gold.
"With gold recoveries of approximately 90% for the Gabbs samples, the initial test work was definitely a success," P2 Gold President and CEO Joe Ovsenek said at the time. "Given these encouraging initial results, we intend to evaluate EnviroMetal's process as an alternative for gold recovery as we advance engineering for the Gabbs project."
In a breakthrough that could make its non-cyanide gold recovery process more economically competitive for operations like Gabbs, EnviroMetal reports that it has developed a revised formula that lowers the amount of reagent needed by up to 80% and lowers the amount of mixing required to dissolve the gold.
These reductions translate to lower upfront and operating costs for gold mining companies wanting to use the EnviroMetal process, which makes the technology more viable for operations with lower-grade gold ores and concentrates.
"We look to confirm and building on this latest breakthrough in future pilot scale and client work," said Moorhouse.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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