Testing Samples Worldwide

However, the most exciting prospects for bacterial leaching may lie not in gold at all, but in base metals.

Gencor is currently running a demonstration plant to prove the viability of the parallel BioNIC nickel recovery process for the commercial treatment of the Maggie Hays ore body in Western Australia, which it jointly owns with Forrestania.

Production from the Maggie Hays ore body, which is still being assessed, could start around mid-1999.

Haines said Gencor was also getting close to cracking the problem of extracting copper from refractory ore.

Bio-leaching itself is not new to the copper industry, which has for years percolated water containing bacteria through waste heaps to extract metal.

 

But so far the high temperatures needed to make the process work rapidly in reactors has confounded scientists.

However, Haines said Gencor had been successfully running a laboratory-scale reactor for a year having bred bacteria which tolerate higher temperatures and would shortly build a larger one which would also be tested for around a year.

The commercial prize could be great. But whereas in the case of gold Gencor opted to license out its technology, for the base metals it aims to use the technology as a lever to buy into mining projects.

We licensed the gold technology but the nickel and the copper we are not prepared to license. The whole emphasis is on leveraging our way into equity participation, said Haines.

For Gencor, setting its sights on a global horizon in the post-apartheid era, bioleaching is a technological key which could open doors to important growth opportunities.