It has been less than a year since Clean Earth Technologies made an outstanding debut on the international market unveiling a portfolio of clean tech to promote a cleaner, richer earth.
New year 2020 is an opportune time to look back at some of the significant achievements that have cemented the CET group as an industry authority tackling some of the biggest challenges in gold mining and environmental remediation.
CET’s progressive clean tech solutions have attracted international interest and sparked important conversations by offering safer options to replace harmful practices in critical areas like mining, oil spills, agriculture and e-waste.
Two solutions are being developed in particular: one revolutionises the gold mining process by removing cyanide and mercury in the gold recovery process, and the other remediates several key environmental issues like oil spills and mercury pollution.
Clean Mining
The innovative clean tech solution developed and launched by CET is a cyanide- and mercury-free gold processing technology from Clean Mining Limited, a part of the Clean Earth Technologies group. Although fresh to the market, this technology—an award-winning, non-toxic solution—has undergone stringent development and testing for a decade, in collaboration with Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO.
The market launch followed the success of a commercial scale pilot plant at Menzies, in the heart of the great mining province of Western Australia. The Menzies project delivered the first ever cyanide-free gold in Australia, with strong commercial results. A second, more recent demonstration project at Leonora, WA, validated the solution’s ability to also remove mercury from gold extraction (a common practice in artisanal and small-scale gold mining).
Since launching, Clean Mining has been inundated with interest, winning the coveted Mineral Processing category in the 2019 Mining Magazine Awards, in recognition of its innovation and benefits for the industry.
This interest stimulated important conversations around current mining practices, sustainable goals for the mining industry and what constitutes truly ‘Clean Gold’. These conversations made their way into some of the world’s most influential mining industry publications and international business and investment media, with CET claiming the headlines.
Clean Solutions
The second solution is being developed by a research team at Flinders University, headed by Justin Chalker and Louisa Esdaile. Esdaile, a Product Specialist at CET, describes the solution as “a sulphur-based polymer.â€? This polymer is made from waste materials like used cooking oil and elemental sulphur, both of which are readily available in mass quantities. It is a promising tool for various remediation concerns, such as oil spills, agricultural fertiliser and mercury pollution.
What Next?
The executive team, led by Group CEO Kevin Fell, has been travelling the world, taking the lead in industry conferences and trade shows like the recent Investing in African Mining Indaba 2020, and bringing innovative solutions to the world’s attention—from a breakthrough for fast and effective oil spill clean-up; to a polysulfide-fertiliser composite, using waste cooking oil to lessen pollution drain from agricultural fertilisers; to safer, more effective mechanisms for e-waste management and recycling; and a potent sorbent for capturing mercury pollution in its myriad forms, whether they be by-products of oil and gas refining or artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
Research and development are ongoing, aimed at improving the efficacy of the above solutions, as well as their commercial viability.
