I pulled this piece from the phone transcripts from Comstock Mining co They talk about the Kam Thio process How it can be used, What it dose in reference to Comstock Mining Co (LODE), It look like they still plan to move forward with the separation project.................Very well. Next question, are you still working with Itronics?
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Corrado F. De Gasperis, Comstock Mining Inc. - Executive Chairman, President & CEO [43]
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Yes. And so I'm glad you asked that question because, in so many ways, the mercury technology parallels in concept with the Itronics' technology. It's completely different and not overlapping, very important point. It's completely complementary and additive, very important point. But whereas the mercury takes tailings, the mercury technology takes tailings and processes, and I keep using plaster mining examples because that's similar to what we're going to be doing here, the equipment is more like a plaster mining system. It's not -- the mercury solution is not restricted to plaster, it could hard rock, it could plaster, so we've got a lot of flexibility there. But whereas it cleans up contaminated mercury tailings and soils, our #1 joy that comes from the collaboration with Dr. Whitney is that, that reprocesses or at least our objectives together is to reprocess formally leached material, some people called those tailings. We think of them a little bit differently, formally leached materials within an exceptional efficacy on silver. And so that model for us is just as exciting as the mercury opportunity, quite frankly.
It fits right into the strategy of as mine deplete their ore, their tailings and their leach pads grow. The reclamation liabilities grow and half the silver is trapped in those pads to be reprocessed. And the reprocessing not only gets the silver similar to the golden discussion in the mercury but it detoxifies the cyanide-wide complex. It takes contaminated materials, it makes them organic and captures the precious metals to profit and sustain that kind of operation.
So the mercury is #1 on our list. It moved ahead of Dr. Whitney temporarily. But now that the deal is done and we're moving forward, and we're brining a little extra help to do this because these things are really getting robust. Itronics has moved back up into the pole position for lack of a better word. And I can't wait to get back into the discussion and in many ways, the agreement that we forged with MCU and mercury is there -- I mean, personally, I think it's a perfect template for working the same or similar way with Dr. Whitney and Itronics. So we're going to pursue that's high on our list. We think it's high on his list, and we are only about a win-win. So we're highly confident that that's going to work out.
