Quebec Firm Extracts Gold Without Cyanide or Arsenic Waste

Gold mining just got a whole lot cleaner, and it happened in a Quebec lab.

Dundee Sustainable Technologies has developed a way to extract gold from ore without using cyanide, one of the mining industry's most dangerous chemicals. Even better, their patented GlassLock process captures arsenic, another major pollutant, and transforms it into stable, inert glass.

The new method uses sodium hypochlorite and sodium hypobromite at room temperature to pull gold from rock. It works in just 2 hours compared to the traditional 36-hour cyanide process, and every chemical gets recycled in a closed loop system.

The arsenic breakthrough might be even more significant. By mixing the toxic element with silica, recycled glass, and hematite, the company turns it into a glasslike substance that won't leak or dissolve. Mining companies can remove it safely instead of storing it in tailings ponds that risk contaminating water supplies during floods or earthquakes.

Real mining operations are already seeing results. Freegold Ventures tested GlassLock at its Golden Summit project in Alaska, home to roughly 30 million ounces of gold. The company recovered 95% of the gold while isolating 98% of the arsenic as inert glass, dropping toxicity levels from 7% to just 0.17%.

The process also eliminated the need for tailings ponds, those controversial manmade lakes that hold toxic mining waste. Without them, mining sites become safer and easier to permit, cutting through regulatory processes that typically take 8 to 20 years in North America.

The Ripple Effect

This innovation arrives as mining companies face increasing pressure to clean up their operations while meeting growing demand for metals. Modern civilization runs on copper wiring, zinc pipes, and countless other mined materials, but extracting them safely has always meant navigating strict environmental rules and community concerns.

Dundee's technology offers mining companies a way forward that protects watersheds, air quality, and wildlife while reducing the regulatory burden on often-small management teams. The closed loop system means fewer chemicals escape into the environment, and the stable glass product is far easier to handle than traditional toxic waste.

For communities near mining sites, the difference could be transformative. No cyanide means fewer emergency response plans. No tailings ponds means less worry about catastrophic spills. And direct-to-smelter quality gold concentrate means less processing and fewer steps where something could go wrong.

Freegold called the test results "extremely positive and encouraging" as it advances toward full-scale mining operations, a signal that cleaner gold extraction isn't just possible but practical.

The mining industry is proving that supplying the materials our world needs doesn't have to come at the environment's expense.