Hydrometallurgy: Leaching in Heap, Vat, CIL, CIP, Merrill–Crowe, SX Solvent Extraction

Hydrometallurgy: Leaching in Heap, Vat, CIL, CIP, Merrill–Crowe, SX Solvent Extraction

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Leaching in Grinding Circuit (3 replies)

Oberstorm
8 years ago
Oberstorm 8 years ago

Does anyone has an experience doing leaching in the grinding circuit? How is the effect to the liner and grinding media consumption?

(unknown)
8 years ago
(unknown) 8 years ago

Given the option I always opt to grind gold ores in cyanide. If you have cast balls and liners you may see a slight increase in wear (5% or less), but with rubber liners and forged or chrome balls no significant variance. Gold recovery will be higher, BUT you need to attend to spills and thickener problems much more rapidly or you will lose gold in solution! You should install carbon columns to extract the gold from thickener overflow return solution, and this may affect your refining cycle, so lots to consider. I would need more data to give specific engineering details, you don't even state that this is a gold circuit, though I assume it is?

Other factors would be grinding size, any preg-robbing elements as well as what level of base metals are in the ore. If high you may want to consider a pre-leach circuit. 

(unknown)
8 years ago
(unknown) 8 years ago

At TK Polysius (now TK Resource Technologies) have developed specialised wear protection system for protecting you grinding mill when grinding in highly acidic environments. This includes epoxy lined mills, chrome or forged balls and rubber liners and specialised Chrome-Moly steels for key components. We have seen no significant change in media consumption or liner wear.

Amar
8 years ago
Amar 8 years ago

We are a hydro-met plant /copper-cobalt in DRC milling ore in raffinate (acidic solution from copper solvent extraction), approximately 10% of copper fed is leached in the milling circuit by mean of raffinate. Mill is lined with rubber lined, depending of type of rubber used, type of ore fed, the life time at maximum design feed rate is 3-5 months grinding media used in the process is high chrome balls (28%-25% Cr) for acid resistant, ball consumption also affected by operating parameters/ore type seating at 0.9-1.6kgs/t ore fed to mill this is different in the gold industry, advantage is quite huge in term of acid consumption and water balance in plant.


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