SBIR Phase I: An Economic, Sustainable, Green, Gold Isolation Process

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Research Phase 1 project is to develop a new, cheaper process to mine gold and silver without using and polluting the environment with sodium cyanide. This will allow the development of new "green" mines, that are environmentally friendly and economically viable. The current state of the art is to use the 120yrs old sodium cyanide process carried out at vast scale worldwide. The new process, discovered at Northwestern University is being further developed by Cycladex. Gold and silver mining is still an important industry for the US with substantial yet untapped reserves and this new process if successful will generate jobs and increase the US development of its own resources. The proposed technology development with in this project will help directly address the environmental, economic, health and social impacts and benefits of current gold mining technology, improving workers' health and safety, enhancing the participation of local and indigenous communities and women and fostering sustainable mining practices in the developing and developed world. About 18% of all gold is still mined by the poor in the third world who use liquid mercury to extract gold. The objectives of this Phase 1 research are to develop a commercial process using the new Cycladex technology, prove the economics and to develop a manufacturing process, which can be scaled up at a gold mine. There are two parts to be developed, the initial extraction of gold using environmentally benign agents and then the isolation of the gold by crystallization using a commercially available natural product. The project will focus on establishing a novel and superior sustainable gold production process with high selectivity, productivity, capital cost and process economics compared to today's technologies.