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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Hobby Miner Prospector & Gold Processing (2 replies and 1 comment)

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bryan randolph
7 years ago
bryan randolph 7 years ago

Hello members,

     My name is Bryan, I am Colorado and my buddy and I are trying to start our own little weekend mining until we get sufficient enough and make enough for a living. We are only interested in gold then maybe a little bit of silver but first of all my first question is

     We have tellurides that we are dealing with and we want to use aqua regia would this be economical for us to use or is there a better way of getting the gold out without using the aqua regia on the tellurides alone?

     We also have a lot of different ore besides the tellurides, we have gold in sandstone with silver that also has a thick mixture of lead pyrite it even had malechite, we just are looking for answers on how to really process this material, we have tons of sulfides like pyrite, arseno pyrite, chalco pyrite so we have a wide base of materials that we deal with around here.

     These are my only questions as of right now on what we need help with and I guess I am asking if aqua regia will solve this problem or do we need to crush and use like a miller table to get the free mill gold out or what? What would the experts suggest doing?

Thank you all for the help my knowledge is on the light side and just would like to know more or have a better understanding.

 

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Richard S
7 years ago
Richard S 7 years ago
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Bryan:  You are indicating a large variety of differing ores to treat for gold recovery.  There are different or differing processes suitable for their treatment.  It would help to know what scale you are intending for this processing.  I would like to assess your chemical usage experience prior to dispensing any treatment procedures. Richard

http://www.kuntermetallurgy.com/

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bryan randolph
7 years ago
bryan randolph 7 years ago
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Thank you Richard the reply,

     So my chemical knowledge is very little but I do know just aqua regia the 3 to 1 ratio and and how to neutralize the nitric acid and then drop it into a fine powder but that is the most of it. I would not mix the concentrates together and try doing it that way as one big batch I would keep it little and in a well ventilated area in a fume hood. I really don't like the fact of using the chemicals but figured I could keep the ore seperated and do it individually. but as far as other chemicals I don't know enough about them so I wont mess with them, i know there is cyanide, and mercury, and froth flotation but I don't know anything about it so I wont try it. But like I stated I would keep the sulfides together in one and telluride's together in one and then just the regular gold flake together but eventually would like to get it all together to refine it down to a .999 percent if possible

      Thanks  Bryan

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Richard S
7 years ago

There are differing treatments required for the various classes of ores you are describing. The simplest ore type is the regular gold flakes (so called free milling ore), which can be cyanided successfully but with due care for keeping the pH in the 10.5 to 11.0 range. If you are not willing to monitor the pH and keep control, I would not do this. I do not think that aqua regia is the best or the safest process for you to use on an ore. You are likely to solubilize more than the gold. You most certainly will not get 0.999 fine gold with this technique. If you can gravity separate the physical gold from the gangue in the ore, aqua regia might work on the concentrate, but you will solubilize more than just gold. There is not a one size fits all process for all of your suggested ore types. You really need some education to treat these properly, successfully, and safely. In all cases, you will be most successful if you have the means of reasonably fine grinding the ore to obtain mineral grain liberation prior to treatment. Each class of mineralization you have mentioned requires separate considerations for precious metal recovery; there is not one process that fits all.


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