US-based Comstock is also targeting new development projects that efficiently reprocess and renew silver and other strategic metals as part of a 'clean energy transition' towards 'climate-smart mining'.
This shift has already begun, it said, with technologies to target leach pads, tailings and mining wastes in efforts to capture additional precious metals.
"The company's partnerships, projects and technologies, involve proprietary processes for remediating mercury and other metals from abandoned and leached mining sites and the surrounding eco-systems, while more efficiently extracting silver, gold and other strategic metals," it said.
Moving forward, Comstock plans to advance novel technologies to improve recoveries, particularly from its resources of gold and silver in Nevada, US. It also will be introducing additional conservation-based projects in the coming months.
Comstock executive chairman and CEO Corrado De Gasperis said the current remote mercury recovery and gold extraction is an immediate example of its efforts.
"MCU's mercury remediation equipment is currently deployed in the Philippines, with processing operations commencing this month. We have coordinated with the community, landed the equipment, assembled the team, and prepped for start-up," he said.
"Our joint venture partners are collaborating to begin removing toxic mercury contamination from US and international eco-systems, while efficiently extracting gold from contaminated and abandoned mining sites."
He noted that Comstock feels its approach is important and timely citing a recent report from the World Bank, Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition, revealing graphite, cobalt, lithium and other strategic minerals and metals production will be spiking dramatically by 2050 with an estimated 3 billion tonnes to be used for energy storage and renewable energy production projects.
"A quantum surge of investment is expected in conservation-based energy storage and renewable energy projects worldwide," De Gasperis said.
"We cannot rely on conventional mining methods to meet critical mineral and metal needs and we are energized by these new opportunities, and the prospect of deploying these technologies to build shareholder value by meeting the increasing higher demand for these strategic, critical and precious metals."
