Bayhorse Silver has reached an Agreement with GreenHawk™ Global Corp to install a closed-loop mine water treatment pilot plant using the patented SOLO™ processing system at the Bayhorse silver mine near Ontario, Oregon, where underground work is ongoing.
Bayhorse says it is marrying mining with technology to minimize mineral processing and upgrading costs and will use the SOLO technology in a closed-loop system in conjunction with dense media and ore-sorting upgrading systems. The SOLO system is a potentially cost effective and environmentally friendly method enabling recovery of additional silver values.
Bayhorse believes implementation of green technology is necessary for the mining industry. The SOLO system has potential to deal with environmental issues from mining and provide solutions which will allow mines to meet more demanding environmental standards required of mining today.
Additionally, many mines produce contaminated water or mine waste that is an environmental problem if discharged untreated. SOLO provides a solution to this problem. It is a patented technology based upon a variant of electromagnetic ionic flocculation and is a result of 20 years of research, development, and application in Mexico.
Thirteen permanent commercial installations in Mexico currently utilise the SOLO system for water and industrial waste remediation. The system is designed to not only produce clean agricultural quality water from contaminated mine effluent, but to also treat solid mine waste, such as tailings piles that can be a serious environmental issue, rendering clean back-fill and/or beneficial end use products.
SOLO is under license to GreenHawk (www.ghwk.com). The Bayhorse pilot plant will be GreenHawk’s first deployment of its SOLO technology for mining in Canada and the US.
Graeme O’Neill, Bayhorse President & CEO: “On the surface, it may look to be a minor thing, but as there is more, and significant, scrutiny of mines and mining, especially on the environmental side, this small thing will have a huge impact for Bayhorse. SOLO is applicable to many industries, but for Bayhorse it does two specific things. The first is it cleans mine water.”
Ron Krusemark Mining Engineer: “All mines have water issues, from small to big, so better be proactive about it.”
O’Neill continues: “With the closed loop clean water process we cut costs, eliminate potentially harmful mine water discharges and for the mine, the lower the costs the better.
“But it does one more thing and that is allow us to recover silver from what we call the slimes, and better yet, it promises to help, in conjunction with ore-sorting and dense media processing systems, to substantially reduce the cut off grade that is mined. That means we should be able to recover more silver at minimum cost, and that goes straight to the bottom line.”
The picture shows President & CEO Graeme O’Neill, Mining Supervisor Dan Capparelli, AMT, at the Bayhorse mine.