Methods for Detecting and Extracting Gold
Introduction Gold is found in various forms on earth. It can be found in rocks, ore deposits, eluvial deposits, alluvial deposits, placer deposits etc. Gold is also recovered from secondary sources such as electronic scrap and waste electroplating solutions. Most methods of extracting gold are extremely expensive and require heavy machinery and are labor intensive. Some methods require the use of highly toxic and environmentally hazardous cyanide to extract gold. Floatation, which is a simpler and cheaper method of extracting gold, does not recover all the gold present in the ores. Recently, methods of extracting gold that utilize naturally occurring proteins or other biological materials have been studied. Technology description Researchers at the University of Washington have developed new methods for Detecting and Extracting Gold by the use of artificially prepared gold binding proteins. The developed proteins have unlimited shelf life. The methods can detect gold in submicromolar concentrations and can recover gold from micron and submicron samples. Business opportunity The invention can be used to detect gold in field samples, to accurately measure the surface area of gold exposed on ore samples, to recover gold from a liquid containing a magnetic mineral and from samples with free particles of sub-micron size, and to determine the location of metal ions in streams, rivers, drainage basins, etc. Stage of development Initial data and working prototypes exist for this technology. Intellectual property position The UW has US and PCT patent applications on file. For more information on this technology contact:Bolong Cao, Ph.D., MBA Technology Manager, Invention Licensing [email protected] 206-543-3970
Type of Offer: Licensing
« More Chemistry Patents