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| Manipueira Gold - founded on the principles of sustainable science and health protection |
December 2022, Partner: UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Global Mercury Partnership. Areas of work include Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) and Mercury Waste Management.
April 2022, Member: International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH), a Scientific Committee in Mining Occupational Safety and Health (MinOSH).
Manipueira Gold eliminates the use of mercury and synthetic cyanide salts in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM).
Our mission is simple - create a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable future for gold recovery |
With growing global demand for responsible mining solutions, we believe Manipueira represents a significant investment opportunity with the potential for financial returns, mitigating health threats, and positive environmental impact.
Our technology, rooted in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles, is more than just a technical innovation—it's a climate action initiative. By converting existing mercury and cyanide-based processing centers to Manipueira leaching operations, we aim to protect communities, preserve ecosystems, and increase gold yields.
Manipueira ends the toxic relationship between mercury, gold, and artisanal miners by introducing a scalable, sustainable plant-based state-of-the-art processing technology.
Resulting from years of research, Bruce developed and published a four-stage ESG-aligned transformational strategy Action Plan the use of mercury- a powerful neurotoxin and synthetic cyanide salts in artisanal small-scale gold ore processing in Ecuador's Portovelo-Zaruma mining district.
This Action Plan details a strategy designed to introduce and demonstrate the use of Manipueira, and the re-purposing of a 50-tonne-per-day mercury and synthetic cyanide salts ore and tailings processing facility into the world’s first Manipueira Precious Metals Leaching Center thereby establishing a scalable, circular-economy model for environmentally responsible and health-conscious gold production.
Alternatives to Eliminate the Use of Mercury in Artisanal Gold Mining- planetGOLD (YouTube Video, 2021)
Years of research conducted at the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia demonstrated when employing a modified Merrill-Crowe gold cementation process (MMCP) and using Manipueira-a toxic agricultural waste byproduct from processing the cyanogenic bitter cassava plant as a lixiviant, recovered 99.3% of gold from ore concentrates and 99.6% from mercury-contaminated tailings in just two hours.
Study of Unconventional Techniques to Eliminate Mercury Use from Artisanal Gold Mining Operations - Doctorial Thesis (PDF, 2023)
This Thesis reports that all the aqueous-free cyanide in the Manipueira solution is consumed during the MMCP leaching mitigating releases to the environment and health threats
This circular economy approach not only transforms an agricultural waste into an industrial solution but also reduces the health and environmental risks associated with mercury- a powerful neurotoxin and synthetic cyanide salts use.
A Review of the Failed Attempts to Curb Mercury Use at Artisanal Gold Mines and a Proposed Solution - (Research Paper, 2020) reports mercury only recovers up to 30% of the ore gold with the rest being lost to tailings wastes.
These wastes are either discharged directly into the rivers or stored in ponds for subsequent processing by the center owners using synthetic cyanide salts which recovers the remaining ~70% of the gold- up to 3 times more gold than the artisanal miners themselves recovered using mercury.
The cyanogenic bitter cassava plant does not contain cyanide (CN-), it's produced by an internal chemical reaction as a defense mechanism triggered only when the cellular structure integrity is compromised for example, by preditors or flour manufactures crushing the plant.
Cassava brown streak: A deadly virus on the move (Research Article, 2023) reports that an estimated 800 million people in 80 countries including 500 million in Africa depend on the root as their main staple.
The Cyanogenic Potential of Certain Cassava Varieties in Uganda and Their Fermentation-Based Detoxification (Book Chapter, 2023) reports that in 2020, cassava production globally exceeded 302 million tons, with more than half of the production recorded in Africa.
Leaching gold with cassava: An option to eliminate mercury use in artisanal gold mining (Research Article, 2021) reports that approximately 34% of the bitter cassava plants weight is toxic agricultural wastewater (a.k.a. Manipueira) containing aqueous-free cyanide (HCN). Hence, an estimated 120 million tonnes of Manipueira is recklessly discarded to the environment by flour makers annually.
Manipueira, which stinks when fermented, attracts insects, creates health threats, causes biodiversity destruction, contaminates the soil, drinking water, irrigation water contaminating the crops, and polluting the rivers.
The symbiosis of artisanal ore processors and flour makers is a win-win situation to reduce environmental pollution, health threats, and mitigating an unintended consequence of harvesting the bitter cassava plant.