India’s first home-grown high purity gold reference standard - the Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND-4201) - was launched on Saturday at the India Government Mint, Mumbai. BND-4201, which is the reference material for gold of ‘9999’ fineness (gold that is 99.99 per cent pure), will be beneficial to the consumers and public at large to ensure purity of gold, said IGM, Mumbai, in a statement.

IGM said once the BND’s of other purity gold are made available in the market, jewellers will move towards more instrumental methods rather than the conventional fire assay methods for testing, which are not only time consuming but also not environment friendly as poisonous gases are released.

Gold reference standard is indispensable in gold and jewellery hall marking. This will also be useful for Collection and Purity Testing Centres to certify the purity of gold deposits under the gold monetisation scheme.

The high purity gold reference standard has been developed through a collaboration between IGM, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre -- National Centre for Compositional Characterisation of Materials (Hyderabad), and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research-National Physical Laboratory (New Delhi).

“The measurement of the high purity BND-4201 is traceable to SI units (International System of Units)….Therefore, the possibilities of exporting to other economies are very high,” said DK Aswal, Director, CSIR-NPL. R Haripanth, General Manager, IGM-Mumbai, said alongwith CSIR-NPL, IGM will soon take up the production of other morphologies of the gold BND’s as well as other precious materials. IGM, Mumbai, is a unit of the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd.

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