Biomin South Africa, which provides biological oxidation (Biox) solutions for the gold processing industry, has flagged the potential to conduct a collaborative research project with its users to improve the value and impact of Biox for all user processes, said Biomin MD Jan van Niekerk.

A survey of user challenges has identified common issues experienced at Biox plants. Further, the knowledge sharing at Biomin’s user conferences over two decades has been effective in improving the efficiency of user processes, he noted during Biomin’s tenth user conference in Guiyang city, in China’s Guizhou province.

“Collaboration will produce the best results over all the plants using Biox and has been proven by the sharing of operational experiences to improve efficiency at our users’ plants. We are committed to continuously adding value to users’ efficiency through maintaining our regular contact and advice.”

Biomin also invests significant time in research, development and innovation to improve the performance of the Biox process, depending on the ore characteristics and metallurgical processes at each of the ten plants in operation across the world.

“Biomin has recognised the importance of new technologies in the Biox process and our research and development is aimed at improving the efficiency of the process and to having an economic impact on the opera- tions, which is, again, our goal of adding value through close relationships and advice for users,” said Van Niekerk.

To enable better advice for all users internationally, Biomin would implement a client information exchange function on its web- site. Clients would log in securely to the exchange on the website and Biomin would then be able to use its research resources to provide advice more rapidly on specific challenges raised by clients.

Meanwhile, the company also detailed its research initiatives to improve the performance of its processes and its work around speciation of bacteria to reduce reagent requirements.

A survey conducted by Biomin identified a number of common problems experienced by users, leading the company to focus on improving four key areas – process robustness, mechanical reliability and suitability of components, process improvement and knowledge transfer, Biomin projects manager Wallies Olivier said.

Biomin has reviewed its design programme and extended its product design to enable users to further suit the Biox design to local conditions and to enable the process to be more robust under different environmental and process conditions.

The company also expanded the range of design criteria that equipment suppliers can use to design equipment and components to enable more robust designs and increase safety factors on critical components, as well as flexibility as the characteristics of the ore coming into the processing plant change.

“We encourage users to contribute to our knowledge of solving problems and challenges, which again highlights the importance of the user survey, and we want Biox users to notify us of all major failures so that we can work with equipment suppliers and our researchers to find specific solutions for the conditions of each plant,” said Olivier.

To improve its processes, Biomin was targeting more design variability at its test plants to enable it to align the data from its pilot plants with mine plants and improve the correlation of data with large-scale plants. This can only be achieved through the local knowledge provided by users, he emphasised, praising the contributions made by Biox users.

Meanwhile, Biomin supported a significant research programme at the University of Cape Town, under the leadership of Dr Rob van Hille, to characterise the microbial species and to find ways of reducing the consumption of cyanide by Biox processes, which was a significant cost driver among many Biox users, said Biomin process manager Craig van Buuren.

The research programme is investigating thermophilic archaea – ancient life forms found in harsh environments – that can tolerate acidic conditions and higher temperatures, which will reduce the persistence of intermediate reduced sulphur and, hence, reduce the consumption of cyanide.

“The research conducted by Dr Van Hille and tested at our pilot plant has found that we can achieve significant cyanide reduction, while simultaneously not affecting gold recovery by using thermophiles. We are targeting temperature ranges of 62 ºC to 65 ºC, which will remove pyrite encapsulating gold particles, enabling it to be efficiently oxidised.

“However, significant work remains to be done to characterise these thermophiles. There remains significant work to be done before we will be able to provide thermophilic archaea for Biox.

Furthermore, archaea are miniscule and identification is based on using molecular biology techniques to determine the DNA sequence of a specific gene. There is still significant primary research to be done before we can characterise archaea for use in our processes,” explained Van Buuren.