Sixth Wave has said its "Green Alternatives for Gold Leaching and Recovery" initiative aims to validate environmentally friendly alternative leaching technologies for the extraction of gold from both cyanide and alternative lixiviants, as well as promote the company's own IXOS technology.

The company uses specialised molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) to detect and extract target substances at the molecular level, and the company is in the process of commercialising both its Affinity cannabinoid purification system and its IXOS line of extraction polymers for the gold mining industry.

Sixth Wave said it is engaged with over 10 mining customers who are either in production, developing greenfield sites, or assessing tailing projects, using samples of ore from their projects to complete laboratory-based analysis of the effectiveness of the IXOS product in capturing gold from a cyanide leach solution. 

Indicative results for an active producing mine in Turkey showed IXOS achieved an 87% gold recovery versus 65% by activated carbon.

"While the COVID pandemic has caused some delays with the start of the Green Alternatives Collaboration we have remained active in demonstrating the effectiveness of our IXOS product to several gold producers," noted Jonathan Gluckman, president and chief executive.

"Much of the potential economic benefit associated with our IXOS product is derived from the ability to capture more gold than legacy technologies through the adsorption recovery process. The increasing gold prices we are seeing in the current environment significantly increase the value proposition associated with IXOS.   We look forward to continuing our work demonstrating the superior effectiveness of this product to the industry."

Gluckman continued, "The surge in price for gold is also opening up new opportunities for the Company as deposits not previously profitable to mine become viable.  This applies to greenfield projects as well as reprocessing of tailings dumps. With reduced capital costs for an IXOS plant, the opportunity to deploy mobile plants tailings projects have become a key market for Sixth Wave."