Extracting gold from rock and waste

Gold Extraction and Purification Technologies claim their process renders gold that is 99.9 per cent purified.

The company is the 100th to be launched by the DigitalCity Fellowship scheme, a programme designed to grow digital media and technology businesses. The scheme is facilitated by University of Teesside and Middlesbrough Council and supported by regional development agency One Northeast.

Andy Robinson, the electrical engineer behind company, spent six years working with the steel industry as a consultant advising on how to make high value products such as stainless steel out of scrap steel. He believes the same can be done with gold.



‘Over the past decade, gold has become a metal of great interest in the fields of science and engineering as new commercial opportunities have opened up,’ he said.

‘This however, has been coupled with increasing prices of gold as well as increased difficulties in extracting new gold sources.’



With help from the Institute of Digital Innovation (IDI) at Teesside, Robinson has been working with design software to map out scientific reactions at a molecular level and predict what will happen to the raw materials. Through his designs he hopes to find ways to reduce reaction development time, increase the profitability of gold extraction and purification and minimise the amount of waste produced through gold processing.