LEADVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CJK Milling Company, LLC (CJK) is excited to announce the elimination of cyanide in our mill extraction process. “We listened to the concerns of the Leadville community and have found a solution to address them. Extrakt leaching technology is a new, innovative, non-toxic alternative to cyanide leaching,” stated Gary Knippa, owner of CJK.
“We are excited to have our cyanide-free leach technology selected along with the TNS dewatering technology in a comprehensive system,” stated William R. Florman, CEO of Extrakt. The cyanide-free leach offers operators a robust environmentally sensitive alternative to traditional cyanide. “This resilient and sustainable leach coupled with TNS™ solid-liquid separation technology adeptly tackles the intricate metal recovery and dewatering challenges prevalent in mining and metals recovery operations. Unlike conventional approaches, TNS™ boasts robustness and insensitivity to clays, offering a versatile solution applicable to various tailings streams. Its implementation yields a noteworthy increase in high-value minerals throughput, potentially leveraging the existing equipment, with substantial cost savings and a reduced environmental footprint—a significant departure from conventional practices. We look forward to developing the process license and engineering design program for CJK.”
Extrakt Process Solutions, LLC (Extrakt) and Bechtel Energy Technologies & Solutions, Inc. (BETS) have formed a strategic global technology alliance, to commercialize Extrakt's novel, leaching technology and solid-liquid separation technology, known as TNS™. TNS addresses the difficult challenges of mine tailings, dewatering, and product recovery in a sustainable, effective manner. Click here to read about the strategic alliance press release.
Highlights
The Leadville Mill will process mine waste at a nominal rate of 400 tons per day. The legacy mine waste will be delivered to the mill via 20 cubic yard covered haul trucks. The material will be fed into a cone crusher and then a ball mill producing a 90 mesh (150 micron) product. This product will be leached using Extrakt’s leaching technology and their TNS™ solid-liquid leaching technology where metals are recovered in solution, resulting in non-hazardous tailings that are virtually stripped of metals. Metals are recovered from the pregnant solution in a small quantity precipitate. Gold and silver are then recovered from the precipitate. The tailings are then filtered and placed in a lined tailings deposit.
Background
The process flowsheet, jointly developed by Extrakt and BETS, represents an innovative and efficient design that offers significant advantages to clients. Its compact structure combines versatility and adaptability, making it suitable for a wide range of operational needs.
This flowsheet delivers several key benefits, including:
- Increased precious metal recovery
- Design to approach continuous operation
- Use of non-cyanide leaching reagents
- Enhanced operational reliability, and
- Robust operation for various feed qualities
The process integrates the Extrakt leaching technology with the Extrakt dewatering technology to simultaneously enhance precious metal recovery in the pregnant solution and enhance the recovery of the pregnant solution during the solid-liquid separation stage following the leaching process.
Additionally, the design is carefully optimized to reduce both capital (CAPEX) and operational (OPEX) costs, providing clients with a highly cost-effective and valuable solution.
Testing & Leach Results
Extrakt's test work has demonstrated its leaching technology's effectiveness across different types of tailings:
- Refractory Tailings: These are traditionally challenging to process due to their complex mineralogy. The positive results with refractory tailings highlight the potential of Extrakt's technology to unlock value from previously uneconomic or difficult-to-treat deposits.
- Non-Refractory Tailings: Leaching tests on more conventional tailings also yielded promising results, suggesting that the technology could be broadly applicable across various deposit types.
Preliminary leaching tests highlight the promising advantages of the technology, demonstrating high recovery rates for both gold and silver—key factors for the economic viability of many mining operations. Notably, the leaching time has been significantly reduced from 18 hours with cyanide to just 6 hours using the Extrakt leaching technology, leading to increased throughput and improved efficiency.
The combination of enhanced precious metal recovery reduced leaching times, and versatility across different tailings types positions this technology as a potential game-changer for the mining industry. It could enable the development of resources previously deemed uneconomic while improving the efficiency of current operations.
About CJK Milling:
CJK is a Colorado remediation company whose mission is to repurpose legacy mining waste. Legacy mining waste is a substantial source of metals at more than 60,000 sites in the United States, with over 7,000 of these sites located in Colorado. One of our primary assets, the Leadville Mill, is a developing project with the objective of extracting remaining metals from the waste and then returning the legacy waste site to its original natural condition. Projects like the Leadville Mill are being applauded and supported by Legislators, as well as State and Federal Regulatory Agencies, as privately funded projects that support the revitalization of historically mining-impacted communities, while accruing significant environmental benefits. We are currently applying for permits to reprocess millions of tons of mine waste left behind by miners in the western United States and Mexico.
The mine waste in Leadville is part of an active superfund site that will be remediated to natural conditions upon completion. Our company objectives are to remove legacy mine waste that contains valuable residual metals from a scarred site, re-process the waste to recover the metals, employ innovative and safe technologies, and then restore the mine-scarred site to original conditions. These goals will be achieved by employing process methods that eliminate the potential for contamination of surface and groundwater by using a zero-discharge process, and treating the tailings to achieve a non-hazardous designation under RCRA.
About Extrakt:
Extrakt Process Solutions is a technology company that is focused on separation technologies for recovering precious mineral recovery, hydrocarbon separation as well as dewatering of mine waste and other related processes. The company has a global patent portfolio and continues to develop new processes and technologies.
About Bechtel:
Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers’ objectives to create a lasting positive impact. Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world's infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place. Bechtel serves the Infrastructure; Nuclear, Security & Environmental; Energy; Mining & Metals; and Manufacturing & Technology markets. Our services span from initial planning and investment, through start-up and operations. www.bechtel.com
