Lee. I will try my best to answer your questions. After reading some material on GPGI it was clear to me that some major increases in production of sludge can be achieved. So I contacted them volunteering some ideas. I talked two days ago with Wayne Palmer (he has implemented one of my "easy fix" concepts in one tank) to follow up on the result. He carried my proposal in one tank where he usually deposited 2.5 lbs/day of copper (in principle, since platinum has an atomic weight three times that of copper, you should concentrate at the anode 3 times the weight of the copper deposited at the cathode, in practice, however, this can be either lower or higher since it depends on the amount of PEG dissolved in the anode during the earlier gold and PEG extraction from the concentrates, I really do not know what this figure is).With the first "easy fix", the rate went to 5.5 lbs per day of cathodic copper (once again, this is very preliminary). I believe they have at least four tanks, so we are talking about 22 lbs of copper per day. It would be nice if I knew the copper/extracted AU, PEG ratio in their initial anode, since then I could calculate the value of AU/PEG in the anodic sludge. I hope to get this info in the near future. In the meanwhile, we can try and make an estimate from current base. Lets take your value of 5 lbs per day of "anodic sludge" at $1000/lbs. If they double the number of tanks to 8 (your doubling to 10 lbs) and use my "easy fix", you get twice the value you quoted. I have a created a personal list of about 16 additional process improvements which I hope to discuss with Jensen. If he implements just two or three of these, he probably can get another doubling of production and you get pretty close (actually above) to my original estimate (I should find a way to get paid for all this "golden" free advice). Since the overhead cost do not increase with these fixes, the bottom line impact is actually much bigger. This is definitely an undervalued situation.
Best Regards,
Zeev |
