Nanotechnology to Make Mining More Efficient Says Nano Med Tech

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) January 18, 2012 -- Almost five hundred million tons of minerals are processed yearly through a technique called froth flotation, in which ore is smashed into tiny particles and floated in water that contains magnet-like collector substances that attach to the crushed metal particles and cause them to surface to the top of the water where they can more easily be collected.

Arnold Li of Shanghai’s Nano Med Tech say that the group has developed a new technology that substitutes water-repelling nanoparticles for the ‘magnets’. “Really it’s like a magnet with reversed polarity. Instead of attracting an object like gold or silver, our nanoparticles instead repel the water surrounding it. Believe it or not, this process is many times more efficient than current methods. And our early small-scale trials have led to results showing a mineral recovery rate that closely approaches one hundred percent. If these results can be duplicated on a larger scale, and ultimately on the scale of an operating industrial mine, we should be able to extract more valuable resources from the earth with fewer and fewer actual excavations,” said Li.

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