The company has the mandate to deliver an engineering package for a plant utilizing the proprietary process for the stabilization of legacy arsenic bearing material at the customer's mine

The company first began a metallurgical test programme with the customer in the March quarter of this year, at which time the mine's plant sent 40 kilogrammes of arsenic- and gold-bearing material to DST's Canadian facility.

The results of that successful test work was successful recovery of the gold and a glass product with over 15% arsenic, which successfully met the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) toxicity characterization leaching procedure requirements.

The customer has commmissoned DST to do process optimisation and prepare an  engineering study at the pre-feasibility level. A final report is espected iin September.

"GlassLock is providing designed solutions for the sequestration of arsenic in a stable glass form, [and DST has] successfully demonstrated [the] technology at the industrial demonstration scale, where arsenical material was processed to generate vitrified arsenical glass, containing up to 20% arsenic while meeting the TCLP Method 1311," the company said.

"GlassLock is becoming an effective and cost attractive technique to segregate arsenic and is therefore opening new opportunities for arsenic bearing precious metals deposits, concentrates or contaminated sites considered to contain too much arsenic to be exploited."

In addition to GlassLock, DST also uses the CLEVR sodium hypochlorite process for enhanced gold recoveries at mining operations in numerous countries.