Hello, my name is Robert Karas and with the help of Diego Santos and other people, we developed a way to process precious metals in a closed loop system completely electrochemically. The idea started when I was tasked with processing some rich gold ore. My first thought was acid leaching using aqua regia. This was the first time I had ever refined gold and learned alot and made many mistakes. But I was frustratingly struggling to precipitate the gold no matter what I did.

Then I came up with the idea to use electrolysis, and it fantastically worked. From there with the help of my business partner we further upgraded and changed the system. We changed from using nitric acid to using sodium chlorate as an oxidizer. This is a far stronger oxidizer capable of dissolving rhodium, iridium, and all other platinum group methods. But most importantly it is far more sustainable and cheaper being made from salt. Then, we developed a way to make the system continuous, where the system both plates off the precious metals and regenerates the acid and oxidizers for further leaching.

Learning more about the mining industry I realized a few issues. Firstly, there is no alternative method. Other methods create lots of pollution and toxic waste. Secondly, most of these methods are unable to extract platinum group metals like rhodium, and in many cases can only do gold and silver. Thirdly, these methods are very expensive or low yielding missing up to 60% of the gold alone. And finally, there is simply no platinum group metal industry in the American continent to begin with. Sending material to get analyzed, refined, and sold is difficult or impossible. Most companies ship your material overseas for foreign labs that take months.

Realizing the benefits of our system and the change we are creating, I understood that the technology is greater than I could ever use myself. Which is the intention to open source. Every week I see a new news article regarding the devastation the mining industry causes to the environment such as a mining waste dam breaking and killing everything in a river, or mercury levels from black market miners destroying the environment. Many governments have imposed restrictions or blanket bans on mining due to these issues and no effective alternative possible. But through a more sustainable mining technology, we see an entire new markets opening up from existing dump sites to new sites that would be opened up by not using existing polluting methods.