This critical metal is only found in mine waste? Dr Olivia Mejias Gonzalez on indium...

Yes.

So the main focus was, as you mentioned, to understand what happened when indium from old rock is release to the environment, if it's possible to release.

There's not many papers talking about that.

And many of them say, no, it's not mobile at all.

So that was the first challenge.

I was trying to do a research, try to see if I can find those evidence.

And what were the conditions to make indium released to the environment? So the first idea was, okay, we work on drill cores to understand the baseline.

That means what is the indium distribute? What is the minerals that cause indium? What is the concentration, the texture, et

cetera.

And then trying to find samples from the waste rock piles that are quite more weather.

and then a few samples from precipitates.

And I think that was one of the key.

I collect samples that were practically stalactites from a cave that we found at the site.

The stalactites that were forming for the dripping of azimuth drainage, completely high concentration in metals and sulfate and some sediment across the river up to three kilometers downstream from the river.

So the idea was to, understand indium in an environment that is a system.

Do we have the waste system and we have the river system and we can try to understand the cycling from release, maybe the local release versus more the far release.

So I think the main idea or the discovery, I think in the stalactite, we surprisingly, I didn't expect to have a close to 200 ppm of indium compared to the 0.05, right? And in the source samples, we found similar concentrations, some of them more, like close to 1,000 ppm, but completely different signatures.

So in the OAR sample, the common thing, because zinc is, because asphalorite hosts indium chalcopyrite, ethanide, etc.

So all of them are sulfide.

But in the stalactite, we didn't have sulfide at all.

Sulfide at all, sorry.

So that was, oh my God, this looks could be quite novel information because it has been no proof from field work that maybe indium can be completely released a specific condition from the sulfide minerals and we precipitate or sink by other neoform minerals.

And when we did the microscope, the scanning microscope, it was completely formed by microorganism.

Wow.

Completely.

Yes.

So the main focus was, as you mentioned, to understand what happened when indium from old rock is release to the environment, if it's possible to release.

There's not many papers talking about that.

And many of them say, no, it's not mobile at all.

So that was the first challenge.

I was trying to do a research, try to see if I can find those evidence.

And what were the conditions to make indium released to the environment? So the first idea was, okay, we work on drill cores to understand the baseline.

That means what is the indium distribute? What is the minerals that cause indium? What is the concentration, the texture, et

cetera.

And then trying to find samples from the waste rock piles that are quite more weather.

and then a few samples from precipitates.

And I think that was one of the key.

I collect samples that were practically stalactites from a cave that we found at the site.

The stalactites that were forming for the dripping of azimuth drainage, completely high concentration in metals and sulfate and some sediment across the river up to three kilometers downstream from the river.

So the idea was to, understand indium in an environment that is a system.

Do we have the waste system and we have the river system and we can try to understand the cycling from release, maybe the local release versus more the far release.

So I think the main idea or the discovery, I think in the stalactite, we surprisingly, I didn't expect to have a close to 200 ppm of indium compared to the 0.05, right? And in the source samples, we found similar concentrations, some of them more, like close to 1,000 ppm, but completely different signatures.

So in the OAR sample, the common thing, because zinc is, because asphalorite hosts indium chalcopyrite, ethanide, etc.

So all of them are sulfide.

But in the stalactite, we didn't have sulfide at all.

Sulfide at all, sorry.

So that was, oh my God, this looks could be quite novel information because it has been no proof from field work that maybe indium can be completely released a specific condition from the sulfide minerals and we precipitate or sink by other neoform minerals.

And when we did the microscope, the scanning microscope, it was completely formed by microorganism.

Wow.

Completely.