| ArticleName |
Practice of the cyanide-ammonia SART process in the copper-gold ores processing.
Review |
| Abstract |
The first publication on the SART process (sulphidisation – acidification – recycling – thickening) and its testing appeared in 1998 in relation to the Lobo-Marte project, which provides for the processing of gold ore with a significant content of copper soluble in cyanide solution. The first industrial SART technology was used at the Telfer plant in Australia, and it is currently being used at other foreign enterprises, producing copper as a by-product and returning cyanide to the main gold leaching cycle. The Telfer plant uses SART technology to process 40–60 m3/h of depleted solution coming from the coal gold sorption unit (CIL technology). Filtration is not used at this plant to separate copper and gypsum precipitates, since the copper-containing thickened pulp is pumped to the flotation plant after neutralization, and the gypsum pulp is sent to the continuous countercurrent decantation section. The target copper content in the purified solution is <70 mg/dm3. The Yanacocha plant in Peru is the only one using SART technology with the AVR process (acidification – volatilization – reabsorption), the purpose of which is the disposal and recycling of free cyanide. A by-product of the SART process is a precipitate containing from 6 to 50% copper. In Azerbaijan, the Gadabek plant uses the SART process with agitation and heap leaching of gold ore, as well as ion-exchange sorption of gold from pulps. Over time, gold extraction at this plant began to decrease, due to an increase in the sulfide content and an increase in the hardness of the ore. Therefore, starting in 2013, two technological lines have been operating at the enterprise in parallel: heap leaching (for ores containing >1 g/t Au) and an agitation RIP process with a capacity of 100 tons of ore per hour (with a lower gold content). The SART section receives a solution of heap cyanidation (100–120 m3/h). The saturated solution at a rate of 400 m3/h is sent to ion exchange sorption in a column version with a fixed layer of highly basic resin Minix XZ-91419, selective to gold. To prevent the accumulation of copper in the circulating solutions, part of them (100 m3/h) is shut off from the main stream and passed through the SART section (where copper and silver precipitate), after which the solution is connected to the main stream. |
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