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Gold/Mining/Energy : Geo2 Ltd. - Processing & Refining Gold -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuca Marsh who wrote (43)	10/13/1999 9:47:00 AM
From: richard badauskas	Respond to of 52

Farmers used DDT very extensively throughout Australia to dip their livestock. I understand that the chemicals used also contained arsenic. In New South Wales alone their are 1635 contaminated cattle tick dip sites (I did not mean sheep-dip as I posted earlier, my mistake) that have been identified, 35 of them are designated as high priority for clean-up. These sites are usually located in places where there are rail lines, main roads, water and population and where the drovers herded their cattle for delivery to other places. So the pollution risk remains to affect water and population. I would imagine that the same situation exists in the U.S. Would be interesting to know how bad the problem is here? The "enviroclean" technology employed is a modified leach process thatis similar to that used in extracting precious metals. A Government grant of about US$0.5M (A$630,000) has been provided to prove up the technology. To date, Geo2 have removed toxic materials from leach liquors to under 5ppm. The next step in the process is to specify "an integrated process system". The technology seems to work on all soil types and I understand is very economic on a "per tonne" basis although I don't have any numbers. The more interesting applications of Geo2 technology are still directed to gold refining. The original ACMR process had a lot of technology bottlenecks to get thru'. The first application is the non-cyanide heap leach process being trialed in China. I understand that the first operational system using this technology will process 15,000 ozs. of oxide gold at Lian (China)in the new year (after the cold winter is finished in March). The oxides are easy to treat and are small, very high grade surface deposits to be mined using cheap manual labor. The advantage of manual labor in China is that it is cheap and plentiful. The costs (per tonne) work out the same as using mechanized equipment in the West without having to come up with cash/loans to buy equipment and then depreciate. So production costs simply run as an ongoing out of pocket expense (don't break down or need maintenance). The chemical costs run the same as using cyanide and the assay results to be announced will give an indication of treatment costs. I understand that they are hoping to be very comparable with costs/extraction rates for cyanide. The added benefit will be that that the used up leachate can be sold as fertilizer to the local farmers and the finished leach pad/heaps can be used as sites to grow grains. The first commercial operation will treat high grade oxides, in later operations "as the technology is tweaked" the grade of the treated material will be lowered. I understand that several additional projects are under review both in the US and Australia for further field trials. The ACMR technology is really attempting to treat arsenopyrite ores. THe spin-off is the just explained heap leach technology and an additional process to treat computer boards to extract precious metals. Understand that there should be a series of announcements about all of this work over the coming months. The work/research is being managed by several Australians who are experts in mining process work assisted by several universities and a multi-million dollar funding from an R&D syndicate managed by Geo2 who controls the patents.

To: Chuca Marsh who wrote (43)	11/1/1999 7:34:00 PM
From: richard badauskas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52

October 26. Geo2 forms U.S. Joint Venture with METSS.org LLC in Columbus Ohio. New J.V. called GeoTech Ltd. to jointly develop processes for the recovery of precious metals and plastics from the electronics, telecommunications and IT industries. GeoTech will apply Geo2's demetalising technology and METSS' plastics recycling technology to scrap from these industries in the US. The METTS technology involves both the recovery of high grade plastics and a significant upgrading of plastics in a value added exersize. These processes would not have the toxic side effects generally associated with conventional smelting to recover metals from scrap. R&D and a pilot plant will be constructed in Australia in 2000. Production is expected to commence in the US in late 2000. Once the Columbus operation is operating satisfactorily GeoTech plans to expand into Asia and Europe.