:: Joint Initiative Provides Gold Recovery Solution for Copper-Gold Ores

The management and staff of Gekko Systems are delighted to announce the release of the ‘Gekko Resin Column’ and the company’s alliance with the Cognis Mining Chemicals Technology group (Cognis-MCT) based in Tucson Arizona (part of the 3 billion dollar Cognis Group) to exclusively market the guanidine based AuRIX^®100 resin worldwide. AuRIX^®100 resin is used to selectively recover gold from cyanide leach solutions.

Gekko Systems undertook trials with a number of different resin products and has discovered that AuRIX^®100 resin has particular application to the gold mining sector. Enthusiastic Technical Director, Sandy Gray states "that this resin product has very high selectivity for the recovery of gold from solution and will select gold over other metals such as copper. As a result, low grade gold can be recovered from copper rich solutions". Mr Sudderth, Vice President of Cognis-MCT believes "that Gekko’s mining equipment expertise and their innovative design philosophy would facilitate the introduction of the unique benefits of the AuRIX^®100 resin to the gold industry".

In order to optimise product handling and longevity, the Gekko design team have developed and tested a materials handling system for the application to be known as the Gekko Resin Column. The Resin Column is a multi-stage pulsed reactor or contactor, which intimately mixes the gold bearing solution with the resin beads. Mass transfer of the gold onto the resin occurs in a very short time, leaving other metals still in solution. Gold can be readily stripped from the resin for subsequent recovery using a hot caustic solution.

Gekko's patent-pending Resin Column has been developed specifically for solutions containing solids. Conventional intensive leaching solutions often require clarification prior to contact with resin. This is generally done in a batch process. Incorporating resin-in-pulp technology enables continuous processing of dirty solutions for the extraction of gold. Barren slurry from the resin column is re-circulated to the leaching reactor to pick up more gold before returning to the resin column. Gold is stripped from the resin on a batch basis as required to control loading of unwanted metals. This new system has the simplest stripping process of any resin or carbon system currently in the market place and enables very high levels of safety and extremely rapid stripping turnaround. In addition, the combined AuRIX®100 and Gekko Resin Contactor offers the lowest cost treatment for pregnant loaded solutions (PLS). AuRIX®100 has been proven through extensive testwork by Cognis to offer very long life expectancy and low operating cost.

3D Drawing of the Gekko Resin Column

The market is potentially huge and covers applications such as heap leach gold with nuisance copper, intensive cyanidation systems and preg-robbing ores.

Gekko has a large scale pilot unit and laboratory capability for customers interested in evaluating this technology.