Green tech company BacTech Environmental Corp. (BAC:CSE;BCCEF:OTC;OBT1:FRA) announced Thursday it has filed a patent application for a new bioleaching process to recover iron and nickel-cobalt from mining waste, converting it into "green" iron and materials for electric vehicle batteries.
As BacTech says on its website, "Our bugs eat rocks." Bioleaching uses naturally occurring bacteria, harmless to humans and the environment, to extract precious and base metals from difficult to treat ores, concentrates, and tailings.
For some companies, using phrases like "environmentally friendly" might be trendy. But Chris Temple, editor and publisher of The National Investor, said BacTech is the real deal.
"This is a company by its very nature that is cleaning up environmental hazards, and at the same time recovering gold and other metals and, in some instances, rendering inert and harmless arsenic, which otherwise is very harmful to the environment," Temple told Streetwise Reports.
BacTech is focused on copper, silver, and gold projects containing arsenic in Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia.
How do the bugs eat the rocks? BacTech President and Chief Executive Officer Ross Orr uses the analogy of a brick wall where sulfur is the mortar holding everything together in the rocks. The bacteria they use chew and oxidize the sulfides, he said.
"This is a company by its very nature that is cleaning up environmental hazards, and at the same time recovering gold and other metals and, in some instances, rendering inert and harmless arsenic, which otherwise is very harmful to the environment."
—Chris Temple, editor and publisher of The National Investor
"Once the mortar is gone, the wall comes crashing down," Orr said.
The patent BacTech is applying for specifically applies to the bioleaching of pyrrhotite, an iron sulfide mineral containing low levels of nickel, cobalt and copper, which Orr said is typically discarded as uneconomic waste by mining operations. There's between 50 million (M) and 100M tonnes of it in the Sudbury Basin in Ontario, one of the world's largest suppliers of nickel and copper.
The tailings could provide billions of dollars' worth of nickel, one of the minerals important to the EV battery supply chain. But the company said it believes the economic potential is even greater for the recovery of iron, while doing so with a lower carbon footprint.
"Clearly, the world has changed to embrace both carbon reduction and an increased need for critical minerals," said BacTech Vice President of Technology and Engineering Dr. Paul Miller. "BacTech now sees the whole playing field and the potential to recover multiple resources from existing pyrrhotite tailings."
The company will set up a test program over the next year in the Sudbury area to further study the new process.
"We're basically planting our flag in the ground and saying we're first," Orr said.
BacTech is also in the process of constructing a bioleaching processing plant in Ecuador which is expected to start production in Q1 2023.
Bioleaching technology has been in limited use since the 1980s. According to Genome Atlantic, it was first used commercially at the Fairview gold mine in South Africa in 1986.
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