Dundee Sustainable Technologies Inc (DST) has announced positive results from a metallurgical test program utilising DST’s CLEVR ProcessTM on two distinct mineralised samples from a gold mining company. DST’s CLEVR ProcessTM provides mining companies with an alternative to the conventional methods of extracting gold with cyanide. It uses sodium hypochlorite with a catalytic amount of sodium hypobromite in acidic conditions to put the gold into solution.
DST was mandated by the gold miner to conduct a metallurgical test program at its facilities in Thetford Mines, Canada. DST received two distinct lots of ~50 kg and ~30 kg samples of representative material from the gold miner’s operating project located in the Asia-Pacific region. The objective of this work was to demonstrate the amenability of the CLEVR Process to extract the gold content from the provided material. In March 2020, DST completed the laboratory metallurgical test program and has announced that the direct application of the CLEVR Process on oxidised samples achieved gold extraction yields of 93.5% and 94.2% respectively for the distinct lots tested.
David Lemieux, President and CEO commented: “Management of DST is very excited of the results obtained with our CLEVR Process with the gold miner. This is great news to see major gold miners interested in assessing the benefits and applicability of CLEVR Process on existing gold assets. Our team will continue working with the client to further develop this promising opportunity for DST.”
In addition, the solid residues, produced as a result of the CLEVR Process were tested successfully against the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxicity Characterisation Leaching Procedure (TCLP, Method 1311) thus confirming they can be considered as non-hazardous waste. The inert nature of the tailings produced by the CLEVR process represent a major advantage in terms of tailings disposal configuration.