Grant: Engage Plus Grants Program

This Engage Plus application aims at supporting the further developments of a collaborative research programbetween Goldcorp Inc. and Dr. Ye at Laurentian University in developing iron oxide/carbon nanocompositeadsorbents for arsenic removal from gold mine effluents. Arsenic is often associated with gold-containing oresand is thus often present in industrial gold mine wastewaters. Due to its high toxicity and increasingly strictenvironmental regulations, the capture and safe removal of arsenic present in industrial wastewaters beforetheir release to the environment is critical to reduce the environmental impacts of mining activities forsustainable development. With an original Engage grant, the team has achieved significant progress indeveloping a class of low-cost iron oxide/nanocarbon nanocomposite adsorbents of high capacity for arsenicremoval. In this Engage Plus project, the team will undertake research works to further enhance theperformance of the nanocomposite adsorbents. The success of this research may lead to an arsenic adsorbenttechnology, which may find applications in the industry for gold mine wastewater treatment.