Technologies
In-Situ Recovery of Gold
By combining non-toxic chemistry with ISR wellfield design, RZOLV™ has the potential to recover gold directly from ore bodies that were once considered inaccessible or uneconomic
In-Situ Gold Recovery (ISGR)
In-situ recovery (ISR), also called in-situ leaching or solution mining, is a method of extracting metals by injecting a leaching solution into the ore body underground and pumping the dissolved metals back to surface for recovery. The key attraction of ISR is that it avoids traditional mining operations—no large scale excavation, hauling, crushing, or tailings disposal are required—thereby dramatically reducing capital and operating costs and minimizing environmental disturbance.
RZOLV™ has strong theoretical potential to enable gold ISR because its non-cyanide chemistry could address many of the constraints that have hindered broad commercial adoption of ISR for gold. Historically, ISR has been applied mostly to soluble metals like uranium and copper; attempts to date at gold ISR have remained limited, partly due to the challenges of dissolving gold under subsurface conditions with sufficiently high kinetics and selectivity without excess reagent breakdown or environmental risks.
Because RZOLV™ is water-based, designed for ambient conditions, and engineered for closed-loop regeneration, it could be deployed in wellfields with injection and recovery wells. The lixiviant would circulate through permeable ore zones (fractured, rubblized, or naturally porous) dissolving gold and being pumped back to surface for recovery via adsorption, precipitation or electrochemical extraction. Minimal surface footprint, no surface tailings, and reduced waste rock handling would be compelling advantages—especially in jurisdictions sensitive to land disturbance, permitting, water management, or social license constraints.
From a commercial potential perspective, the ISR/ISR-compatible gold space is still emergent but represents a meaningful upside. Many gold deposits currently considered uneconomic due to high strip ratio, remote location, complex metallurgy, or environmental constraints might become viable with ISR. Early-stage projects in Wyoming, for example, are actively exploring ISR gold recovery using non‐cyanide chemistries.
Risks remain: the deposit must have favorable permeability, confining hydrogeology (to prevent leach solution migration), gold mineralogy conducive to dissolution, and minimal buffering gangue minerals that consume reagents.
If successfully developed, RZOLV™-based ISR for gold could unlock a new class of low-cost, low-impact gold recovery, make marginal or deep deposits economic, and shift the paradigm away from heavy mining infrastructure toward “keyhole mining” solutions.
