Innovations and Breakthroughs in the Gold and Silver Industries

The book describes all aspects of technical innovation related to the gold and silver industries, from ore identification through to processing. It includes details of comminution, pre-concentration and beneficiation, commercially available and recently developed innovative pyro and hydrometallurgical processes, including leaching processes, separation and purification, and recovery and refining. The book focuses on capital and operating cost estimation, process simulation, waste remediation and minimization.  Sustainable gold and silver processes are examined with the use of clean technologies and efficient use of energy and water. Topics such as supply and demand of gold and silver, their exchange in major global markets, and the factors that influence gold and silver prices and major economic indices are discussed.

• Presents emerging trends and innovations in the areas of ore body knowledge, mining, processing, waste management, economics, finance and automation;
• Describes emerging enablers for the gold and silver industries such as digitization, automation and remote operations;
• Promotes breakthroughs in mining, processing, waste management, energy and water from an integrated operations perspective.

• Gold mining and processing
• Silver mining and processing
• Ore body knowledge
• Geo-metallurgy
• gold extraction
• Silver extraction
• gold economics
• gold mining waste management
• integrated operations
• corporate social responsibility
• gold and silver mining
• mineral resources

• Process Research Ortech Inc., Mississauga, Canada

  Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan

• Hindustan Zinc Limited, Udaipur, India

  Barun Gorain

​ Dr. Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan is an internationally renowned teacher, scientist and innovator in the areas of sustainable development and clean technologies. He has more than 40 years of hands-on experience in technology commercialization and skills development initiatives with both private and public sectors including the United Nations. His corporate experience includes roles in Noranda, Eldorado Nuclear, ORTECH Corporation and Process Research ORTECH, the last of which he founded and guided to become a global leader in sustainable process technologies development through its laboratory and pilot plant.  He received the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Award for his services to Canada.

Dr. Barun Gorain has more than 25 years’ experience in mineral processing plant operations, capital projects and technology management with a focus on improving operations profitability and project economics.  His industry experience includes working for Barrick Gold (presently in their Corporate office in Toronto since 2005), Teck (Cominco), Mt Isa Mines (now Glencore), Coal India and Hindustan Zinc (now Vedanta). Dr. Gorain has a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from JKMRC (University of Queensland) in Australia and a B.Tech degree in Mineral Engineering from Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.  

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