You might be wondering what this has to do with cyanide…

Well, cyanide and gold have had a sweet romance for more than 125 years. Nowadays, the so-called “gold cyanidation” process remains the most efficient technique to extract gold from ores, using more than 6% of the annual cyanide production worldwide. Cyanide is both a biodegradable and a very toxic molecule. Yet, if handled and destroyed properly, cyanidation can actually be considered a green approach towards gold extraction. At CyanoGuard, we strive at making its toxicity visible, so that we can sustain our current lifestyle full of electronic devices that require large quantities of gold (and indirectly cyanide), while protecting the environment.

So with these facts in mind, it is clear that Australia is the natural place for CyanoGuard to be. Our team is currently visiting our friends overseas, trying to learn as much as possible about cyanide management from a mining and an environmental perspective. This time we did not come by boat, as the immigrants were doing during the gold rush times, but spotting these cyanide pools from our flight is also quite an epic affair.

Stay tuned!

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CyanoGuard’s gold rush was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I bet you played at least once in your lifetime with LEGO figures and by looking at the yellow-faced figures below far memories will be triggered. And when I say “far”, I’m talking about the glorious time you had assembling a LEGO Castle last weekend. No wonder why LEGO was named “Toy of the Century” by the British Association of Toy Retailers in 2000.

This being said, have you ever asked yourself (or brickipedia) what these colourful bricks are made of?

Since 1963 LEGO elements are produced using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). This plastic polymer gives LEGO figures their characteristic hardness and resistance. What you might not know, is that up to 35% of ABS consists of the cyanide-containing compound acrylonitrile.

Before I scrap your plans for the weekend or you start considering buying a gas mask for your upcoming brick construction… don’t panic! ABS is harmless under normal conditions and actually no cyanide is released when you play with it.

One thing though, toxic hydrogen cyanide originates during the combustion of ABS…so don’t burn it!

P.S.: Show some respect for both human and LEGO firefighters!

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Cyanide and the toy of the century was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Zurich, Switzerland — October 20, 2017. CyanoGuard enters the exclusive list of innovative SMEs selected for funding within Horizon 2020, the “biggest EU Research and Innovation Programme ever.” The company was selected for funding under Phase 1 of the SME Instrument, which finances feasibility studies for potentially disruptive new products.

“This award is a game changer for our company” said Benedikt Kirchgässler, CyanoGuard’s founder and Managing Director. “To be recognised by the European Union as an innovative player in our continent’s food and water safety is a huge achievement for us, especially since we are a very young company,” he added. “It is an honour to be part of the small list of Swiss companies that have received funding from this instrument. We are coming a step closer to our vision of a world where fast and simple pollutant detection is available to everyone,” he said.

The funds will be used to study how CyanoGuard’s CyanoKit® tackles societal challenges related to climate change, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials, with close attention to food and water safety. In 2015, less than 10% of all the proposals submitted to the European Commission under Phase 1 received funding.

Last year, CyanoGuard’s innovative technology won the second prize during the Royal Chemical Society’s Emerging Technologies Competition in London and an interest free loan from the Volkswirtschaft-Stiftung. The company recently closed its seed funding round and is a 2017 W.A. De Vigier Nominee.

CyanoGuard AG is a chemical technology company based in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in August 2016 as a spinoff from the University of Zurich, the company develops new testing methods to improve food and water safety, environmental monitoring and emergency healthcare globally. CyanoGuard’s first commercial product, CyanoKit®, enables everyone to detect cyanide in any setting at any time. Following successful partnerships with early adopters from the mining, electroplating and chemical industries, CyanoKit® will be formally launched during the fourth quarter of 2017.

Contact person:
Jealemy Galindo
jealemy at cyanoguard.ch

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H2020, Phase 1 in the Pocket! was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At CyanoGuard, we believe that the time has come to end years of obsolete cyanide detection.

And so we came up with CyanoKit®, a rapid, simple and reliable free cyanide detection kit that allows both trained and untrained users to detect cyanide in liquid samples.

Hello significantly reduced environmental footprint

Goodbye hazardous chemicals and polluting specialised equipment

See it for yourself…

For more info, visit our website https://www.cyanoguard.ch/makingcyanidevisible

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Making Cyanide Visible was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome to CyanoBlog, CyanoGuard’s platform for cyanide-related content sharing. Our aim is to exchange knowledge, professional expertise and relevant facts related to the different industries in which cyanide plays a prominent role.

We’ve noticed that, in common culture, the word cyanide is usually associated with suicide pills, murder cases and mining practices. Indeed, cyanide is a highly poisonous chemical compound and it is used as an additive to chemically extract gold and silver. But there’s more to that.

Cyanide occurs naturally in seeds and fruit stones (apple, apricot and peaches), almonds and even cassava roots (cyanogenic glucosides to be more precise). It is also the by-product of many chemical processes (think of hydrocracking) and it is released as a gas after combustion of common materials (household goods, etc.)

If you are already aware of the role of cyanide in our daily life, this is the place for you to catch up on the latest news. But if you don’t know anything about the topic, that’s also fine. We will share everything you need to know.

For now, we leave you with a short but powerful guide on the chemistry of cyanide, its role in the mining industry, how it affects our environment and health, and current sampling and analysis procedures. For those interested in detailed information: the guide also includes the most comprehensive cyanide references’ list we have ever seen.

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All Things…Cyanide was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Did you know that non-properly prepared cassava can lead to cyanide poisoning upon consumption?

That is because cassava contains linamarin and lotaustralin, which are cyanogenic glycosides that eventually decompose to hydrogen cyanide (HCN) once the plant tissue is damaged. In fact, it often takes a few pieces of non-treated cassava to achieve lethal dose levels.

Why is cassava so important?

Cassava is food for low-income consumers and over 500 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Also, cassava is gluten free and snacks made from this root are delicious!

Given cassava’s prominent role in Africa’s food security, the Gates Foundation (Bill & Melinda’ that is) has decided to fund the development of micronutrient-enhanced cassava to fight malnutrition. If you are curious about the technology behind this project, click on this fantastic video explainer (below).

Is it safe to eat cassava then?

Yes, as long as it is properly treated and tested. But there’s a catch: cyanide testing in remote locations can be cumbersome and not accessible for everyone, especially farmers. Can the development of fast, simple and safe cyanide detection methods for remote locations help safeguard food safety and fight malnutrition?

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Cyanide 101: Cassava was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In previous posts, we have briefly touched on cyanide and the gold mining industry. Let us elaborate a little bit more on the subject: cyanide is used during gold extraction to separate gold from ore, a process called gold cyanidation. Interestingly, this practice dates back to 1889, when the very first cyanidation plant was built at the Karangahake’s Crown Mine in New Zealand. But not much has changed in 120 years. In fact, only very few alternative processes (one of them developed at the lab of Nobel Prize winner Sir Fraser Stoddart) have the potential to compete against old-fashion cyanidation practices in the future. Until then, cyanide is expected to remain vital to an economically viable, water-based gold extraction process.

Yet, the combination of metals and cyanide in aqueous solutions is not limited to the mining industry. Cyanide derivatives are commonly used in the electroplating (also commonly known as galvanic) industry, where objects are dipped in cyanide-containing plating baths to metal-coat them. Just to give you an idea of the relevance of this industry, think of very shinny (inexpensive) jewelry or the rims of the wheels of your car.

Not many people are aware of the fact that a large number of economic activities heavily depend on industrial cyanide. To make our point, we’ve gathered (what we hope is) a rather surprising list of industries. Here it goes:

• Pharmaceutical (vitamin B12 production)
• Aerospace (airplane breaks and rocket propellants)
• Computer electronics
• Safety (fire retardants, Plexiglas, road salts)
• Plastics and polymers (nylon, adhesives)
• Beauty (nail polish remover and cosmetics)
• Chemical (dyes, paints)
• Food processing (table salt)

And here’s an interesting fact…

Most of the industrial cyanide produced today is not used for gold (or silver) processing.

More on this in a later posts.

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Cyanide ≠ Gold Mining was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In case the news have passed you by, on the 28th of March 2017 a cyanide spill incident took place at the Veladero mine in Argentina.

The Veladero mine is located in the San Juan province, West Argentina, home of “El Valle de la Luna”, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The main economic activities in this region are agriculture (wine and olive oil, among other products), manufacturing and, as you might have guessed, mining. Around 544,000 ounces of gold were produced in Veladero in 2016, and its mineral reserves are expected to be at least ten times higher. This mine is at the forefront of innovation and generates 20% of its electricity demand using the world’s highest-altitude wind turbine, installed in December 2007.

Due to the rupture of a cyanide-carrying pipe in March of this year, the government of San Juan has temporarily restricted the use of cyanide until the damaged site has been repaired and verified. The Argentinian’s Environmental Ministry asked the Federal Court to halt activities at the site most likely because, unfortunately, similar episodes have taken place in the past 18 months.

September 12th, 2015. What initially was thought to be 15,000 liters of cyanide-containing solution turned out to be a more than one million liter leak, spilled into a nearby river. What happened? The cyanide-contaminated solution passed through all emergency pools and into a local river due to a malfunctioning sliding gate.

“The water did not contain cyanide or other contaminating metals, so I decided to lift the cautionary measure,” said a federal judge after reversing the imposed cyanide ban 12 days after.

September 8th, 2016. A large block of ice damaged a pipe carrying a cyanide-containing solution that leaked outside the processing area. Mining activities were temporarily suspended and the cyanide-containing solution did not reach any water courses.

March 28th, 2017. A ruptured pipe was responsible for spilling a cyanide-contaminated solution that, fortunately, did not leave the operating site. A few days ago, the provincial mining minister Alberto Hensel publicly manifested the province’s frustration with the situation. Until today, a ban on cyanide addition is in force.

These three incidents highlight the role of equipment failure at the Veladero mine. Enforcing the adoption of higher safety standards and recurrent investments on improved infrastructure are vital to the mining industry. Yet, our belief is that fast and simple cyanide detection methods that allow for instant, on-site detection can contribute to the early detection of cyanide spills. For more info, visit our website.

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What’s going on in Veladero? was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our brainstorming session quickly followed the “let me tell you three stories today…” direction.

And so “three stories, three minutes” was born. Here’s the result.

About CyanoGuard AG

CyanoGuard AG is a chemical technology company based in Zurich, Switzerland. A spinoff of the University of Zurich, it was funded in August 2016 to improve water and food safety, environmental monitoring and emergency healthcare globally. Together, our team members have more than 20 years of experience in applied chemistry, product engineering and business.

We have developed a ground-breaking technology that allows for naked-eye detection of cyanide in water, food extracts and blood samples. Our first product, CyanoKit, is a semi-quantitative colorimetric test for free cyanide in water. Our kit allows both professional and non-professional users to test for free cyanide in any setting and at any moment. Our method is simple and eliminates the use of hazardous substances. Moreover, our sensors compete with current market alternatives in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, handling and speed of detection.

For more info, visit our website www.cyanoguard.ch

Help us spread the word! Like our post and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay up to date. #makingcyanidevisible

Three stories, three minutes was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seventeen years ago 100 tonnes of cyanide were spilled into the Someș river, a water stream that flows through the Romanian municipality of Baia Mare (let us refresh your mind with a short, yet precise recap on what happened). The spill is considered the worst environmental disaster in Europe after Chernobyl, affecting not only the region’s ecosystem but also its economy. In a 2010 Deutsche Welle clip, a local member of the community points out:

“If you don’t earn any money you starve to death, but if you have a job and earn something, you die from the poison”.

Today, mining remains a point of heated debate between Romanians and mining companies, with both parties struggling to find a satisfactory agreement. In fact, according to a recent Foreign Policy article, Romanian citizens actively demand a ban on cyanide mining. But the question remains…

Is a ban on cyanide heap leaching the solution?

Enhanced Preventive Measures as an Option.

On a more positive note, Baia Mare’s spill brought together key stakeholders who in 2002 developed a code of best practices in the gold mining industry. The International Cyanide Management Code emphasises the use of proven and reliable methods for sampling and measuring different cyanide species in water. Yet, one of the biggest issues in all industries where cyanide is used OR produced, is its detection and quantification. Usually, other chemical substances, also known as interferences, are present in industrial waste waters and often lead to false readings in cyanide detection methods.

More on this in later posts.

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Baia Mare’s Cyanide Spill: 17 Years of Legacy was originally published in CyanoBlog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.