Winona, Ontario -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/17/2011 -- Eldora Gold proudly announces it has completed the assembly of its premiere pilot plant, dubbed GravSep™, to assist with the extensive process testing phase. With GravSep™ on site, Eldora will use a combination of physical separation processes to extract a concentrate from the first selected mill tailings site in Kirkland Lake, Canada. This concentrate will contain the majority of the recoverable metallic values in these former tailings, as well as the majority of the minerals responsible for the adverse environmental consequences of the original tailings disposal.
The proprietary process includes the preparation of a recirculating water pond, whereby final tailing separation from pulping water will provide recirculating water for pulping fresh feed, thus no continuous use of fresh water is required. After pulping the excavated feed and pumping the pulp through the physical separation process, Eldora anticipates ultimately discharging a tailing material in a form suitable for environmental rehabilitation of the site.
Eldora Gold anticipates, based on initial testing, that the auspicious debut (1/2 tonne per hour) of GravSep™ will result in not only the recovery of valued minerals, but also the rehabilitation of former tailings sites. Given the assembly of its portable equipment, Eldora intends to provide a dual benefit from the operation of GravSep™ units: by marketing the resultant concentrate into suitable channels and also providing a low-energy green solution to mining communities.
The GravSep™ is designed to be scalable, and is suited for small deposits less than 300,000 tonnes that cannot support permanent high capital cost equipment installations. The anticipated advantages for Eldora’s proprietary environmentally-friendly physical separation processing, which can be tailored to each specific deposit, now include potential for successful treatment and rehabilitation for many smaller size deposits using simple to maintain and operate equipment, as well as chemical-free processing. Pumping is the single major energy input, and it extracts and recovers valuable mineral concentrates which also have significant deleterious environmental effects when left in-situ.
From an environmental standpoint, tailings have always been an unwanted byproduct of mining. These tailings are left in piles and potentially leach environmentally-destructive materials into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Processing tailings thus also reduces the negative environmental impact of remaining minerals from the original mining process.