September 15 : CSIRO Exploration & Mining scientist, Dr Ryan Noble, has found that chemical ingredients in soft drinks and wine may underpin extraction of minerals at a cheaper cost.

The researcher says that chemical ingredients in these drinks, including weak organic acids, have the ability to dissolve weakly-bound metals into solution.

“When you mix the drinks with soil, acids dissolve some of the metals into solution, which can then easily be detected in routine laboratory analysis,” Dr Noble said.

According to him, this chemical ability of wine and soft drinks makes them very suitable for use as a cheap extraction tool, which can be applied to mineral exploration.

“They are particularly good at discovering elevated levels of metals such as silver, zinc, copper and nickel,” Dr Noble said.

Dr Noble and his colleagues were initially a bit ‘tongue-in-cheek’ about carrying out the tests, but they were later astounded by the results.

“In many cases, the comparison of metals extracted using wine and soft drink were superior than those extracted using conventional, and much more expensive, commercial solvents,” he said.

He presented the results of his study at the recent 2007 CRC LEME Mineral Exploration Seminar. The aim of his presentation was to spread awareness about this new, unconventional technique among people associated with the exploration industry.

Dr Noble says that the effectiveness of technique is unlikely to be affected by whether the wine is a shiraz or a malbec red wine. He also says that diet soft drinks are just as effective as those containing sugar. (ANI)