Laboratory Testing & General Mineral Processing Engineering

Laboratory Testing & General Mineral Processing Engineering

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Leaching methodology mixed ore Au/Ag/Cu with limited materials, basic chemistry help (1 reply)

K
kevind
4 years ago
kevind 4 years ago

I'm looking for help with processing ore containing gold, silver, and copper.

I live in fairly remote location in Baja California on the Sea of Cortez, (an hour by boat from a small town with basics that is 6 hours from a city) and acquiring certain materials/ reagents can be quite difficult, so I'm working with what I have access to: HCL, bleach, sulfuric acid, baking soda, potentially recoverable saltpeter from septic tanks, wood to make lye, a pound of sodium metabisulfite that I kind of need for something else in the future but could spare it if it makes things that much easier,no decent method of crushing ore, nor floating or shaking. This remote location of mine, as the crow flies lies within under 10 miles of at least 8 different mines from the last to centuries that were mined for au, ag, and cu. The gold is all refractory, much of which being coated over pyrite. The largest producing mine in the area cyanide leached and used a froth flotation machine. The ore I'm processing is mixed, including from several of the mines, tailing from a milling site, local rock veins outside my back door. Lots of sulfur in ore too. Most of this information is coming from an assay I found, they didn't list how the silver is formed, but that it's mixed in the same ore and usually not visible

Current process:

1) roast 2)crush halfheartedly by hand 3)cover in HCL and more than necessary of NaHCl over a few days with stirring. ----Here's my 1st question: My solution should have dissolved Au and Ag, but not Cu? my area is incredibly mineralized, what else, assuming that every element is available in my pile of rocks, would be dissolved and worthy of attempting recovery?

---back to process--

4)strain and dilute 10-1 with water ---bing bing bing! question 2: here, silver should precipitate, and the gold %100 still in solution right?

---back to process---

5) collect precipitates, and assume silver is inside for further refining 6) add lye from woodash and/or baking soda (not at same time) until no further reactions visible or precipitates formed 7) let sit in the desert sun for a week or two (should burn all my chlorine off of the gold and eventually turn all the gold into purely elemental with enough time right?

Now for the overarching question, with my available resources. Does this seem like the most efficient option of method I have available? Is there a way I can get copper into the process to not have to leach my tailing again? Fe, Mg, Al, Zn? I'll take whatever is plausible if i'm already halfway there by having the rocks semi crushed.

I'm keen on hopefully keeping the HCL bleach process in action as I live on the sea, have solar, and a desalination unit and can produce  fairly pure NaCl i.e. hopefully I can get my chlorine through electrolysis at some point 

Sorry if I this is in the wrong section or I was supposed to look harder for these answers, I'm really bad with forums and search engines and would really appreciate any help I can get.

J
Jorge
4 years ago
Jorge 4 years ago

I think you should consider a testing program to evaluate the metallurgical performance of the different materials you mentioned. Initially, try to evaluate separately the ore types, based on the results, you can try to blend the material. The treatment of refractory gold is not simple and cheap. Other point to consider is tonnage you have. All the information will be useful to make a technical and economical evaluation.

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