GGX Gold Corp (CVE:GGX) (OTCQB:GGXXF) revealed that drill core from its Fall 2018 diamond drill program at the Gold Drop project in British Columbia will now be re-analyzed for tellurium.
Tellurium (Te) remains one of the rarest elements on earth and its production is a by-product of copper and gold mining.
READ: GGX Gold recaps last year's exploration highlights from Gold Drop project
As previously reported, GGX's 2018 program was conducted at the C.O.D. vein, which lies in the Gold Drop Southwest Zone and multiple samples returned high grades for gold and silver.
Notably, two holes exceeded the upper 500 grams per tonne (g/t) analytical limit for tellurium.
Samples from these holes returned 129 g/t (grams per ton) gold and 1154 g/t (grams per ton) silver over 7.28-meter core length.
Up to recently, the only use of tellurium has been alloying of other metals to increase the machinability of copper or to decrease the corrosive action of sulfuric acid on lead.
Solar panels
But it is now used increasingly in photovoltaic solar cells.
These solar cells are the forefront of solar power and such cells have the smallest carbon footprint and the shortest energy payback time of all solar cells.
Production of tellurium is limited, estimated to being around 800 metric tonnes per year. According to the USGS (United States Geological Survey), total production in 2007 was 107 metric tonnes.
Contact Giles at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow him on Twitter @Gile74