Optimisation of gold recovery by adjusting the CIC extraction process :

Abstract

Several methods exist to recover gold from ores such as leaching, gravity concentration and flotation. Leaching by cyanide solutions or gold cyanidasation, however, has been the main metallurgical process for gold extraction for more than one century, however the in CIC method has greatly been picked interest by almost everyone who may wish to recover more gold than other methods like wet panning gold washing using ice boxes etc. However, it has failed to meet the expected recovery due to the great chemistry involved in it that affects the dissolution of gold and its respective adsorption. In reference to Mubende TMT CIC plant, the low dissolution of gold is affected by the competing copper ions which can also react with cyanide solution in almost same conditions as gold also could react to form complexes that also affects directly the final gold that could be adsorbed by the activated carbon prompting to low recovery, however, this problem has been looked for measures to curb it, through increasing the cyanide concentration, varying pH, regular testing for the concentration of gold in the tailing before filled in the tanks and pre-treating the tailing mix. Among the above measures from observations pre-treatment of tailing mixture before cyanide leaching is carried out is the most cost effective and has an advantage of recovery of copper which can also be sold to increase on the sales of the company, reduces the consumption of cyanide solution and does not almost change the usual operating system apart from pre-treatment section. The excel programme has been used to analyse the results and solid edge used to redesign the recommended layout of the improved CIC plant