Scientists of the region learned how to extract gold from coal. They have created an experimental plant that is capable of extracting up to one gram of precious metal from every ton of fuel burned. It is planned to introduce the development at one of the boiler houses in the region as early as next year.
It looks like you can't say that this stove with a set of pipes is a prototype of an installation for extracting precious metals from … coal! For 15 years Amur scientists have been analyzing the composition of solid fuel from different fields. We found out: for example, in every ton of coal from the Erkovets basin there is about a gram of gold. This means that millions of rubles are thrown away annually by each boiler house in the region.
“The fact that both useful and harmful components are deposited on the filters has already been proven by the scientists of the Amur Scientific Center. If the installation even captures half - this is, say, half a gram per ton, then it is easy to calculate what economic effect this is. That is, they burned a ton and got 1,500 rubles,”explains Oleg Ageev, General Director of Integrated Innovative Technologies of the Amur Research Center.
The installation principle is simple. The smoke from the burnt coal goes through a hundredfold cleaning system. First, impurities (including harmful ones) are washed out with water, and then captured by filters. It is from them that the gold-bearing concentrate is extracted, which can then be given for refining. The method is patented.
Coal is generally not as simple as it seems, scientists say. The Amur Scientific Center of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences has developed technologies for the production of microfertilizers from solid fuel, which regulate the growth and development of agricultural crops - oxygumates. There are already similar ones on the market, but they are more expensive and less effective.
“There a liter costs 1250 rubles. I affirm that they will not be more expensive than 120 rubles in our country. The increase in the yield of soybeans is 2-3 centners per hectare, wheat 2.5 - 3, and barley - up to 4 centners,”says Ilya Savchenko, a leading researcher at the Amur Scientific Center of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
And in this laboratory they study new methods of enrichment and deep processing of silicate raw materials. It can be used to make a wide variety of products: from glass to aluminum. The technologies developed here are also protected by copyright. At one time, representatives of Germany, Korea and China were interested in the ideas of the Amur residents. But the matter never came to the creation of pilot industrial enterprises. This requires about 20 million rubles. The sale of just one license for the production of alumina and amorphous silica (which is about $ 6 million) would have more than recouped the costs.
“If you sell the final product, and if you create pilot industrial enterprises and sell licenses, preferably non-exclusive (and exclusive licenses are already the sale of all technology with all equipment and a pilot industrial enterprise) - this is one option,” says the head Vyacheslav Rimkevich, laboratory of science-intensive processing technologies of the Institute of Geology and Nature Management, DVOL RAE.
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But so far there is no need to talk about big money. Now scientists expect to receive a 1.5 million grant in Skolkovo for an industrial plant for gold extraction. The regional ministry of housing and communal services promised to assist in the implementation of the project. If everything goes according to plan, then already next fall one of the boiler houses of the Blagoveshchensk region can literally become gold-bearing.
