The Amira P420 project series has a long and valuable history, delivering new data, technology, and knowledge to the gold mining sector for over 27 years.
The current iteration of the project, P420G, has 14 sponsor companies and ‘funders’ (not Amira members) from Australasia, North America and South Africa, including support from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Ecoeffecient Beneficiation of Minerals (CoE Minerals).
The final Sponsor Review Meeting will be held in May next year as P420G draws to a close.
Where does the future lie now?
Industry-wide input is sought into the next step in the delivering breakthrough science in the P420 project, P420H.
An online roundtable will be held on Thursday 3 February 2022 to explore the topic. The event is open to all companies working in any commodity.
You do not have to be an Amira Global Member to participate.
This is a valuable opportunity to join Amira Global and our collaborative partners the Gold Technology Group (GTG) and Curtin University to actively plan the future of gold research.
Registration details will be released in early 2022.
More details about P420H
The P420H project aims to continue support of the gold industry in achieving operating excellence despite the challenges, both continuing and emerging, being encountered by the industry today:
- human resources are still the key to successful operation, yet skilled gold metallurgists are in short supply.
- large, high grade, free-milling deposits are becoming less common, and companies are turning to difficult to process (i.e. lower grade, complex and refractory) orebodies to maintain reserves.
- the tools to evaluate, optimise and predict performance are limited for dealing with anything other than well-established technologies or simple free-milling orebodies.
The GTG has a long history with Amira collaborative projects related to the gold industry and will be leading P420H. GTG is a research group, primarily funded by industry, at the Western Australian School of Mines: Mining, Energy and Chemical Engineering, Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
Outcomes of P420
The Amira P420 series of projects have delivered an extensive range of achievements to sponsors over its lifetime. Key deliverables from the most recent iteration include:
- reports from multiple worldwide operating-site studies that have provided sponsors with information on process performance, in addition to data acquisition both for the project and the companies involved.
- a comprehensive benchmarking survey which acts as a census of gold processing practice to be used for identification of industry best practice and for comparison to other global operations and previous industry practice surveys.
- in person and virtual delivery of process model workshops, gold processing courses (for non-metallurgists and metallurgists) and geology for gold industry course, reaching more than 1300 participants.
- upgrade of website platform, including improved search function, access to virtual training courses, access to Sponsors’ Review Meeting content, benchmarking results, enhanced process models.
- carbon management guidelines.
- dashboard for viewing the gangue rejection database.
- review reports on sensors needed for automation of gold plants (cyanide analysers, pH, DO and online gold analysers), cyanide recovery options, alternative lixiviants and the use of peroxide in gold processing.
- reports on leaching of ultrafine ground concentrates from two study sites (Eleonore and Pogo).
- electrochemical study of organic oxidants used in intensive cyanidation.
- support for four Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students and three 4th year student thesis projects.
For more information about P420 and the upcoming roundtable please contact Dr Anil Subramanya at anil.subramanya@amira.global.
