Green
KB has gone Green. KB's refinery technology is also totally Green. KB does NOT use toxic chemicals in their refining process. How many refineries can say that?
KB has a tactical advantage in the market place. Not only does KB use their own mine(s) and refinery, KB uses others. KB maximizes gold extraction from tailings from other refineries.
Tailings, the pulverized stone that remains after processing, (also known as slimes, tails, leach residue, or slickens) are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore.
KB utilizes tailings from other
refineries and is able to remove additional bullion. KB may extract as little as 1 or 2 grams per ton from some
loads and many more grams from other loads. The amount that can be extracted depends on the technologies used by other refineries. This is a proprietary "Patent Pending" extraction technology.
Tailings are distinct from overburden or waste rock, which are the materials overlying an ore or mineral body that are displaced during mining without being processed.
The key here is that KB is able to take competitor waste and refine more gold. There is an UNLIMITED supply in the marketplace. The extraction of minerals from ore can be done two ways: placer mining, which uses water and gravity to extract the valuable minerals, or hard rock mining, which uses pulverization of rock, then chemicals. In the latter, the extraction of minerals from ore requires that the ore be ground into fine particles, so tailings are typically small and range from the size of a grain of sand to a few microns. Mine tailings are usually produced from the mill in slurry form (a mixture of fine mineral particles and water). Tailings represent an external cost of mining, and this is particularly true of early mining operations which did not take adequate steps to make tailings areas environmentally safe after closure.
Modern day mines, particularly in jurisdictions with well developed mining regulations and/or operated by responsible mining companies, incorporate the rehabilitation and proper closure of tailings areas in the mining costs and activities. For example, the province of Quebec, Canada, requires not only submission of closure plan before the start of mining activity, but also the deposit of a financial guarantee equal to 70% of the estimated rehabilitation costs . Tailings dams are often the most significant environmental liability for a mining project.
