Gekko has continued to show its commitment to the mining industry through its sponsorship of the AMIRA P420 project since it’s inception over 15 years ago when the P420A project kickedoff. Now into its fifth project (P420E), the P420 project has made significant contributions to the understanding of many gold recovery processes and has developed a range of tools to support metallurgical process engineers as they understand, optimise, manage, retrofit and design their plants.
The P420E project will continue developments in cyanide based gold recovery processes, including processes for high copper gold ores and silver gold ores, and with a renewed emphasis on refractory gold deposits. New environmentally benign lixiviant systems for low-grade ores, evaluated for simulated in-situ and heap/dump test environments will be explored under the “Future ores” section.
The Gold Technology Group within Curtin University will perform the bulk of the Research, Development and Technology Transfer with internal collaboration within Curtin University, and external collaboration with the CSIRO as required (AMIRA P420E proposal document, 2012).
An early meeting of the P420 research sponsors, October-November 1999. Note Gekko’s Nick Katsikaros far left
and Sandy Gray fourth from right with the late Professor Andre La Plante, centre front
The continuous gravity model was developed in the P420 project by the Gold Technology Group, working in-conjunction with the previously known Cape Technikon (currently incorporated into the Cape Peninsula University of Technology). The Parker Centre Gravity Model (PCGM) was developed during P420B in order to facilitate the optimisation of gravity gold recovery circuits and a Continuous Recovery Simulation Model (CRSM) is available to simulate the recovery of sulphide minerals by continuous recovery devices and processes, such as jigs and flash flotation.
