Technical and financial innovation in one project: Columbia Metals Corporation (also at this link) has contracted with BioteQ Environmental Technologies (also at this link) to construct and operate a copper recovery and water treatment plant at the Lluvia de Oro Gold Property in Mexico. The news release at this link provides all the details, so I merely summarize for your immediate convenience.

  • The property currently includes a heap leach pad containing unleached gold, a “well developed gold resource”, a solution refining plant, and other support facilities.
  • The gold deposit contains cyanide-soluble copper minerals. BioteQ’s sulfide technology can be used for cyanide regeneration for recovery of free cyanide and copper-complexes cyanide from the barren solution following gold recovery from the solution. Regeneration of the cyanide also allows for the recovery of copper as a sulfide product.
  • The technology is an improvement on the Sulfidization, Acidification, Recycling and Thickening (SART) process developed by SGS Lakefield Research and Teck Corporation and is used by permission on a license-free basis.
  • BioteQ will provide all capital and operating costs for the copper recovery and water treatment system. They will recover their investment by sharing the net revenue from gold, silver, and copper production.

Some additional resources I found relevant to this property and the companies involved: