Reclamation of Mercury-Contaminated Tailings from Small Gold Mining

This Mitacs Acelerate proposal is the first of three-phase project of Adriana’s Goncalves master’s thesis. For this present MITACS proposal, it will be investigated routes to extract gold, mercury and other possible valuable minerals from a representative sample of AGM tailings from Costa Rica. The tailings belong to a small Canadian company, Newlox Gold that is starting an enterprise to reclaim Hg-contaminated tailings in different countries. For this, they need a simple method to extract Hg and value from the tailings in order to payback the reclamation activities. The case study for this research will take place in Canada at the laboratories of UBC Dept. of Mining. This conceptual study is critical to establish the basic parameters for the processing design, and flowsheet(s) required to develop the unit operations of the processing plants to be recommended for the Newlox Gold as a result of this research. The research is also part of a larger conceptual model of Small Mining Is Beautiful which defends that small gold plants can be cleaner and more sophisticated than the usual ones generating more environmental and social benefits in developing countries.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Marcello Veiga

Student:

Adriana de Oliveira Goncalves

Partner:

Newlox Gold Ventures Corp.

Discipline:

Engineering - other

Sector:

Mining and quarrying

University:

University of British Columbia