Jokes aside? Did I say that you know what you're talking about on another thread? If I did I take it back.
You're saying that:-
- the total energy input;
- the cost of the collectors/reagents; and
- the cost of relining the furnace could cost more than $3,000 to treat each tonne of ore?
They could easily be recovering 2oz of gold from each tonne. Steel is $600/t but they make plenty of money smelting that using massive amounts of energy.
You're also saying that:-
- the company has a non-repeatable method;
- that they can only produce a gold rich slag; and
- they don't know the grade of the gold button?
As I said above, they are still in the final stages of the testing phase. Testing involves trial and error. There are so many variables it would be impossible to achieve continuous improvements with every subsequent parameter permutation.
The recent high slag grades simple means that they won't use those parameters again. Other parameter combinations were much more successful. It doesn't matter how many errors they make as long as they have optimised the process when it's time to crank up the pilot plant.