Mining opportunities for smaller gold deposits Through ON, they interviewed potential customers to identify opportunities where the thiosulphate could be applied and examined “investment readiness”, such as business and equity models, funding options and founder agreements. Having gone through the CSIRO-managed national science and technology accelerator program, ON, the team has gone beyond the science to look at the whole process and its economics. “It works for us because we’ve got the infrastructure there and we get first look at any new technologies developed,” Mr Hanna says. The longer-term vision is for mobile processing facilities that can unlock gold deposits stranded by factors such as resource size and transport costs. Processing infrastructure is being built out of modular components and the Menzies site is expected to be used for ongoing research and development for several years. This would provide opportunities for the research organisation to demonstrate the method on a greater range of ore types from other gold miners, enable equipment suppliers to trial and develop customer-driven solutions in collaboration with industry and researchers, and provide opportunities for research and training of metallurgical students. Also appealing is the relatively low capital expenditure requirement, which essentially gives us a low cost entry into being able to treat our own gold.”ĬSIRO and Nu-Fortune Gold envisage the plant being used as a gold processing research hub. “We’re an entrepreneurial company, and the fact that we could be market leaders in the application of this technology is very appealing to us. “It piqued our interest because we were searching high and low for an alternative to cyanide at our battery,” Mr Hanna says. It has already been banned in some states in the USA and parts of Europe. Nu-Fortune Gold director, Paul Hanna, says the company believes there is a risk that within the next few years many countries will ban cyanide in gold production. The demonstration plant aims to prove at scale that the reagent (or lixiviant) can economically recover gold in an alternative process to techniques using cyanide, overcoming a range of health, safety and environmental risks and associated regulatory obstacles. Results indicate that it can be applied to a range of ore types, as opposed to a highly specific alternative to cyanide developed by Barrick Gold together with CSIRO at its Goldstrike mine in Nevada in 2014. The method has undergone intensive testing in the laboratory to understand its leaching performance in association with reagent recovery and recycle. The plant will demonstrate CSIRO’s thiosulfate-based recovery process – a non-toxic reagent to dissolve the fine gold out of ores (the gold that is not recovered by gravity) and its application – in the next stage towards its commercialisation. Demonstration plant for thiosulfate gold recovery process The plant is being built in the West Australian goldfields at Menzies, 130 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie, where Nu-Fortune Gold leases the old stamp battery site from Perth Mint and currently produces small-scale gold bars with a mill and gravity circuit. The demonstration plant, which will open in 2018, is at the centre of a collaboration between CSIRO and small producer Nu-Fortune Gold. Demonstrating a golden opportunity in environmentally-friendly processingĪ low cost demonstration plant for technology that can overcome the environmental risks and regulatory barriers associated with the use of cyanide in gold recovery, could hold the key to unlocking stranded Australian deposits.
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