World Gold Council Gets Behind Tech Innovation

Unbeknownst to old-style chemists, gold has proved to have use as a catalyst. Gold nanoparticles are already showing their stuff in medical treatments. The trouble with these procedures is they have a hard time getting out of the lab. The World Gold Council has decided to do something about it, setting up a committee to matchmake between gold innovators and venture capitalists.

The WGC has released a study "Gold, The hidden element in innovation" that identifies how gold has been instrumental in "ground-breaking" advances, while also pointing the way to gold's future use in "a multitude of new products and processes" that look particularly apposite both to medical uses and environmental protection....

Highlights of recent developments include:

• Professor T. Pradeep at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras is a leading expert in water technology and nanomaterials and he has shown that gold nanoparticles can detect and remove pesticides, halogenated organics and heavy metals from drinking water. Meanwhile Professor Michael Wong at Rice University in Houston has developed a gold-palladium nanoparticles catalyst that shows incredibly high activity in deconstructing a common chlorinated pollutant (trichloroethylene) into harmless constituents. The Council is supporting a collaborative partnership between the team at Rice University and catalyst developers Mintek in South Africa. Early results from the work are impressive; a pilot facility is under construction at a major chemical company site in the US.
• Emission Control Catalysts. Nanostellar, in the Silicon Valley, has developed NS Gold TM. This is designed for use in the automotive sector, using gold alongside platinum and palladium in emission control catalysts. WGC invested in Nanostellar to accelerate the commercialisation of the technology, which is due to go into production during this quarter.

Gold is also proving to be a vital catalyst in the production of Vinyl Acetate Monomer, a chemical useful in resins and paints. It has the potential of elbowing out the more toxic catalyst mercury.


This trend will lead to a sea change for gold investors; normally gold-related companies looking for the big strike are explorers. It's worth watching, as it puts the drop on the old saw about gold having no use...even if the long-term result might be to make gold only a commodity, in the sense of a consumable product.