Purifying gold is a dirty business. After extraction, the precious metal - rarely found in its unadulterated form and usually mixed in with silver in natural deposits - must be dissolved in acid before electrolysis produces pure gold. The procedure is known as gold parting, and it’s a clunky and expensive endeavor on an industrial scale.
The so-called ALS unit produced by EZOCM Engineering. Photo: company
Now, a resident company at Skolkovo’s efficient-energy cluster has developed unique technology it nicknames “acidless separation,” whereby a vacuum distillation process separates out the more volatile metal (silver) based upon the difference in vapor pressures.
Gold bullion produced by the ALS unit. Photo: EZOCM Engineering
“Acidless separation technology has no counterpart anywhere in the world today,” says Stanislav Chelnokov, the general director of developer EZOCM Engineering.
“It’s a real innovation in the metals industry which we are now offering to the world market and will be actively promoting,” he added.
The energy cluster’s Pavel Morozov noted the technology will “significantly reduce expenditure on recirculated metal, lower operating costs and minimize harmful emissions in the workplace.”
EZOCM Engineering has produced a machine that is capable of processing several dozen kilograms of gold-silver deposits in one technological cycle. Depending on the mass of the composition and mass of the raw material, the cycle’s duration ranges between 40 and 60 minutes, with a metal quality yield of 98 percent.
Alexander Khlebnikov, the company’s chief metallurgist and the inventor of the technology, noted: “The technological process of vacuum distillation is a preparatory refining operation aimed at removing anything restricting the quality of the raw material, more precisely the silver content in gold-silver deposits.”
The company has declared its innovation to the market at a conference of the International Precious Metals Institute in Texas in June, and claims to have garnered interest from more than 20 countries including Japan, India, South African, UAE, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.
EZOCM Engineering hopes to have its solution on the market by the end of the year, but has already signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Kazakhstan’s government-controlled joint-stock Tau-Кen Samruk National Mining Company to equip its subsidiary with the technology.