ABOUT
THE COMPANY
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Bucharest, Orizont Deschis is a 100% privately held Romanian limited liability company pioneering a proprietary technological process to recover precious metals and platinum group metals from roasted iron pyrite waste.
The company has become an innovative leader in the recycling of precious metals. Our dual focus on environmental sustainability and economic value creation positions us as a key player in this domain, aligning perfectly with the vision for industrial diversification and green initiatives.
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Through a unique blend of innovation, sustainability, and economic opportunity we can achieve industrial diversification, contribute to a circular economy and unlock the value of underutilised resources.
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) and Total reflection X-Ray Fluorescence (TXRF) analysis, enables daily quality control and is a critical tool in the development of new recovery techniques.
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Orizont Deschis owns a 5’000 square meter processing facility for the recovery of precious metals in ChiÈ›orani, 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) invented a technological process that concentrates the PM/PGM found within pyrite ash, and 3) the process to transform head ore that is classified as hazardous into material that can be safely stored, transported, and sold, being environmentally friendly, while consuming just 0.1% of the resources required for traditional mining.
HISTORY
A long standing problem...
Romania’s sulfuric acid plants roasted millions of tons of pyrite concentrates (FeS2) for generations. The workhorse feed came from the Romanian Golden Quadrilateral and adjacent gold mining districts.
These activities have a consistent formation process and history that informs the minerology and geochemistry of the resulting refractory pyrite ash present today, an industrial residue that concentrates precious and critical metals and preserves a record of mine geology, beneficiation, roaster chemistry, and in-plant handling.
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 because of a triple encapsulation architecture of Au/Ag and Au/PGM tellurides as cores, magnetite/hematite shells, and an outer jarosite cement that can be further glazed by silica. Repeated tests of the same sample using standard assay. Our three laboratory methods resolve the industry bias and establish defensible grades for Romanian roasted pyrite ash. 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.
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
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T +40 372 927 372
Registration Code
RO34311109
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Trade Registry J40/3932/31.03.2015