BioteQ commissioned a new water treatment plant located at the Lluvia de Oro gold mine site in Sonora, Mexico, in the fall of 2008. The plant is a new application of BioteQ’s technology, designed to recover copper from cyanide solution, as well as regenerate and recycle cyanide for use in gold extraction, using BioteQ’s ChemSulphide® process in combination with the SART process developed by SGS Lakefield and Teck Corporation.

Project Benefits:

The application of BioteQ’s technology at Lluvia de Oro has a number of process, environmental, and economic benefits. The plant can:

• Remove copper from the gold leach solution, improving the overall metallurgical performance of the gold operation, resulting in improved gold recovery.
• Regenerate cyanide for the gold leach process, reducing the net consumption of cyanide for gold recovery.
• Reduce operating costs for the gold process by reducing the volume of cyanide reagent required to extract the gold.
• Remove copper from the environment, reducing environmental liability while producing a saleable copper by-product that can offset treatment costs.