Gold goes Hi-Tech
Harmony Gold Mining and Mintek announced
the entry of Harmony into Project AuTEK, a pioneering initiative to pursue
research into new industrial uses for gold. Harmony now joins AngloGold, Gold
Fields and Mintek as partners in this exciting venture which has generated
world-wide interest.
Project AuTEK was first launched in June 2000, and is a focused programme to
investigate and develop the use of gold in advanced industrial processes and
devices, and in consumer applications. The project has research affiliations
with a number of institutions worldwide, including SASOL and the Universities of
Cape Town, Witwatersrand and Pretoria in South Africa, as well as ECPM in France
and the University of Leiden in The Netherlands.
Mr Ferdi Dippenaar, Marketing Director of Harmony, said this week that
"Harmony was serious about adding value to its gold, and was pursuing a
number of initiatives in this regard, ranging from innovative jewellery to
industrial chemicals. The interaction with Project AuTEK is expected to
complement these other activities, and could lead to further downstream
developments in due course".
Dr Elma van der Lingen, of Mintek, who is leader of the Project AuTEK
programme commented that the added input and resources of Harmony would add
tremendous value to the work that is being done. She pointed out that "Gold
has many un-exploited properties that are very appropriate for use in currently
emerging technologies. For example, gold has been found to be an excellent
catalyst for many chemical reactions important for cleaning up pollution. It is
also one of the foundation materials used in the important new field of
nanotechnology, which offers the promise of more powerful computers and better
medicines "
Also announced today was the unveiling of Project AuTEK's first working
prototype of a room temperature air purification unit that strips poisonous
carbon monoxide gas out of air. The unique feature of this unit is that it
performs the operation at room temperature whereas all other known systems to do
this require the air to be heated. The new unit uses super-active catalysts
based on gold, and is expected to be considerably cheaper to manufacture and
operate than potential designs based on other types of catalyst. Its areas of
application include restaurants, hospitals, hotels and office blocks.
Contact Dr Elma van der Lingen, Mintek, +27-11-709-4471, email : elmavdl@mintek.co.za
for more information
|
