South African process-engineering start-up, Free Radical Process Design, recently completed an industrial benchmarking exercise on its Rotowinner® containerised demonstration plant, and installed the demonstration plant at Impala Refineries’ base metals refinery in Gauteng.

This marks the first steps towards commercialising this novel continuous-electrowinning technology, which combines electrowinning and cathode stripping into a single continuous operation by reshaping existing parallel-plate electrodes into a rotating cylinder configuration. Successful implementation of the technology will increase the production rate of electrochemically extracted metals, decrease electrical costs, and improve plant safety.