ABOUT
THE COMPANY
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Bucharest, Orizont Deschis is a 100% privately held Romanian limited liability company. It is our purpose to, in a commercially viable and environmentally friendly manner, clean up the pyrite ash waste problem in Romania. We hereby utilise a proprietary technology to extract precious metals from gold-bearing sands and multiple waste piles generated from the production of sulfur and phosphate fertiliser.
Our company is permitted under N° 7849/19062017 issued by Agenţia Naţională Pentru Protecţia Mediului to operate using our process, and under N°9669 issued by the Autorizația Naționala Pentru Protecția Consumatorilor to extract, process, sell, buy, import and export precious metals.
OPERATIONS
Orizont Deschis offices are located in Bucharest where we also run one of few fire assay laboratories in the CEE region. Fire assay is a time-tested method, and is the most accurate, industry standard tool for the detection and measurement of gold-bearing ores. This capability, combined with in-house X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis, enables daily quality control and is a critical tool in the development of new recovery techniques.
Orizont Deschis owns a 5’000 square meter processing facility for the recovery of PM in Chițorani, Prahova. Besides recycling and processing its own tailings from multiple Romanian sources, we also offer third parties a comprehensive recovery solution, enabling the use of an environmentally benign process to recycle the hazardous tailings and recover precious metals from difficult ores.
KEYS TO SUCCESS
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Research, development and ongoing improvement are integrated into our daily operations. This approach focuses on continuous innovation and provides us with a critical and crucial competitive industry advantage.
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Our extraction techniques emphasise environmentally responsible solutions to recover precious metals. Virtually all materials we work with are “regenerated” and used repeatedly within the production cycle. This reduces the environmental impact of the chemicals we work with and enhances recovery levels. Our technology is proven to reduce sulfur and arsenic levels present in our feedstock below the threshold required by the EU, and that required by the Romanian Government for monitoring of hazardous materials.
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Orizont Deschis is the only company world-wide that has 1) the methodology to enable an accurate evaluation of PM within pyrite ash waste piles, and 2) the process to transform head ore that is classified as hazardous into a form that can be safely stored, transported and sold.
HISTORY
A long standing problem...
Over the past century, industrial facilities across the former Soviet Union and its satellites utilised a standardised method for the extraction of sulfur dioxide from pyrite ores for the production of sulfuric acid and sulfur fertiliser. This method utilised the Contact Process to pass high-temperature, molten sulfur, derived from ferrous sulfate, through platinum-coated catalyst beds.
As this process was essentially copy/pasted throughout the former Soviet areas of influence, millions of tons of pyrite ash waste remain throughout Eastern Europe, North Africa, and parts of South America. The shuttered facilities throughout this region currently present a significant environmental hazard, with both airborne and groundwater contamination being present at the industrial sites.
RECYCLING
Orizont Deschis uses a mechanical process that is environmentally benign, and results in the transformation of head ore that is classified as hazardous into material that can be safely stored, transported, and sold. This indicates that, after running through the production process the remaining waste becomes environmentally safe for re-use in the construction industry as a source material for cement, and therefore 99% of the tailings by mass is either separated and commercialized as precious metals or safely recycled into the construction industry as an environmentally compliant source material
The significant amount of water consumed through the process is recycled for two-thirds with the balance being collected and processed by certified domestic water treatment companies.
Moreover our process does not generate air pollution as the oven areas in the production hall are closed and equipped with a capture, neutralisation and gas filtration system, meaning there is zero airborne environmental pollution.
These abilities alone have resulted in Orizont Deschis being approached by government representatives to assist in the clean-up of pyrite ash piles.
TECHNOLOGY
Our core technology was designed by our team in the early 1970’s and has been optimised since to maximise the recovery of PM from pyrite ashes. Providing an environmentally responsible alternative to traditional metals recovery, Orizont Deschis has invented three independent breakthroughs related to the recovery of precious metals.
First, accurate measurement and detection of precious metals within pyrite ash waste is an extremely difficult problem. High iron, silicate, and complex sulfide and oxide components make detection of the refractory precious metals contained within the waste matrix a major challenge. Repeated tests of the same sample using standard methodologies will typically show either no or very low levels of precious metals proprietary methodology enables accurate evaluation of this type of resource. This allows us to confidently screen waste piles from different facilities to establish their economic potential and allows us to differentiate between low and high-value processing targets within individual waste piles.
Second, we have invented a technological process that allows us to concentrate the precious metals found within pyrite ash. This methodology results in the creation of a mineral concentrate many times higher in recoverable PM/PGM value than the original head ore.
Third, Orizont Deschis has created a system to recover valuables from the mineral concentrates we produce. Current OZD operations are focusing on scaling these developments to produce in-house dore for sale.
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GREEN
80% of the world’s primary gold production comes from industrial mining. About 27% of the total annual gold demand is covered by recycled gold.
Orizont Deschis uses a non-toxic extraction technology to substitute conventional processes using cyanide (or other toxic substances). This enables to continue the production of gold while meeting increasing demand for gold without cyanide. Also, where cyanide is not yet banned, projects are being stopped due to opposition to the use of cyanide, being a highly toxic reagent for both human health and the environment.
At a social level, there is increasing pressure on politicians to reduce the costs on the environment from the mining industry. Not only is cyanide environmentally toxic, but it is also socially toxic. There are alternatives for gold extraction, such as mercury, but it is even more dangerous to the environment and human health as it bio-accumulates, ensuring that its toxic load increases with time.
Orizont Deschis has been identified as a “Green Gold” producer. “Green Gold” is not perceived as a brand but rather as a general term for ecologically sound gold. Green Gold is sourced only to the highest standards of environmental stewardship, Health & Safety and human rights of their labour force.
In our opinion, recycled gold is the prime example of resource efficiency and closed loop recycling management. A study by the Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences (Institute for Industrial Ecology-INEC) on the carbon footprint of gold extraction confirms that the climate footprint of recycled gold from scrap gold (in our case tailings) is around 53 kg CO2 per kilogram of gold. However, when gold is extracted from mines, the carbon footprint is up to 1,000 times more.
We believe that the PM market is ready for a change to sustainable gold, and that we must seize the opportunity now to communicate this to end customers because it is not only a question of where the PM come from, but also how this can be achieved through a recycling process.
CONTACT US
ORIZONT DESCHIS SRL
13 Parfumului Street
3th District
Bucharest - Romania
T +40 372 927 372
Registration Code
RO34311109
Trade Registry J40/3932/31.03.2015