Issue 3/2021 - Clean gold extraction technology successfully developed

Recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences released news that the team of Jiang Biao, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed clean gold extraction technology and complete sets of equipment with independent intellectual property rights, and obtained 99 gold
through industry-university-research cooperation to implement tonnage industrial demonstrations.
This technology pioneered the micro-interface air strong oxidation cleaning and gold extraction technology, bringing hope
for the gold production industry to get rid of highly toxic cyanide.

The cyanide method and mercury mixing method have been used for hundreds of years to extract gold from gold pollution
.
The production, transportation, storage, use and waste containing cyanide pose a great threat to the environment and human health, and the traditional cyanide heap leaching process poses a threat
to surface water, groundwater and soil.
Green and clean gold extraction is a key technology
for the sustainable development of the gold industry.

The new technology system of strong oxidation of micro-interface air and gold extraction proposed by Jiang Biao's team uses the release of active oxygen species when the micro-nano bubble bursts to rapidly oxidize the gold in the mine into water-soluble gold ions, and the leaching rate of gold ore is more than
95%.
After seven years of joint research, scientific researchers have completed the development and process verification of ore powder leaching equipment from gram to ton level, so that gold refining has been completely "detoxified to green"
in key steps.

Using this cyanide-free gold extraction system, the cost of environmental protection treatment can be reduced from 1,000 yuan per ton to 15~25 yuan, which can help gold producers cross the "death valley"
where environmental protection costs have risen sharply.
In addition, the energy consumption of the new technology system is about 30% lower than that of the traditional process, and the leaching time of gold extraction is doubled, from the general cyanide heap leaching number of 10 days or even months to 1~2 days, which effectively improves the gold extraction capacity, realizes the "win-win" of environmental protection and efficiency, and solves the problem of
low leaching rate and high environmental pollution.