# Heap Leaching



## Franciz (Sep 6, 2013)

Anyone here had experiences in Heap leaching for oxide ore?

Thanks


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## rusty (Sep 6, 2013)

Franciz said:


> Anyone here had experiences in Heap leaching for oxide ore?
> 
> Thanks



https://www.google.ca/search?q=Heap...re&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8


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## Franciz (Sep 7, 2013)

Rusty,
Look at my question and you replies again, I know what you means but your reply just don't make sense to me. You send me a link to google search, Do you mean i should do a search in google before asking in this forum? It your answer is yes then please allow me to ask you how do you know i had not search through google before asking?

Personally i don't like the way you reply, What do you think if you were me? If all the process could just be understood in just a click in google search then why is this forum use for? I thought this forum is a place where we can share experiences with each and others but why am i getting an answer like you?

I am here to seek for person who had experiences in heap leaching or at least understand the whole process so i could discuss the process of heap leaching information i found on ''google search'' and other books so i could understand better from someone here.

Please don't reply in the ways you reply me to others, You should ask ''Have you done a search in google''. I may be misunderstanding your intention and if i do i am sorry....


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## artart47 (Sep 7, 2013)

Hi!
Welcome to our forum!
I have some gold containing quartz. Untill I can get my rock crusher built I've been crushing small amounts with a hammer and am going to pan it for gold when I get enough crushed. I've been studying shaker tables and wave tables thinking about how I'll process my ore. I got the Idea of taking a large plastic pan and puting a small pile of ore at one end and dripping either AR or HCl/chlorox into the pile and as it flows out the bottom, recirculating it back to the pile to see how much gold could be leached out in a week or so. Then all of a sudden I saw this post with exactly that process. that's remarkable!
I'm sure there are people here that would have experience with "heap leaching" you call it?
Please understand some of us are really touchy right now, lately we have been over-run with new people comming on our forum who have no idea about refining and who are unwilling to read, or search or follow our advice to put away the chemicals and educate themselves and learn what they are doing and why and how to do it safely.
They have an entitlement attitude and demand to know the process to get the gold out....
Per-haps you could post again and give us some info about what you are wanting to leach, quantity and what other treatments you've done on the material and the results so far It will help with finding someone who has worked with the same material who can help 
Per-haps doing some small test leaches like I was talking about will give information or pictures that would help us.

Good luck artart47


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## Franciz (Sep 7, 2013)

Dear Artart47,

Thank you for welcoming me to the forum.

I had process some quartz ore with lot of free gold, I did not had the ore assay because i only had a gunny sack of it and assay fee here is very expensive.
I process it by using a hammer to make it until small pieces and crush it with a locally brought hammer mill then process it to ''gold cube'' the gold cube was really great to handle small amount of material, The gold cube capture those very fine gold and left only with less than a Kg of concentrate from the whole gunny sack i then panned it out with hand. There is no more visible gold after it had run through the G.C. I recovered 4.6grams of gold after refining those gold that i had panned out.

My friend took the tailing to one of a person he knows and try to process the crushed ore witch i had already run through the G.C and he could recover another 7grams+ of gold from it. I heard that guy process the ore by using cyanide. That means the non-visible gold is much more than the visible gold. I later know that the ore contains lots of microscopy gold which is not visible by naked eyes. Harold had the experience in this type of ore if i don't remember wrongly.

I don't think a concentrating table could recover much gold from it if it contains lots of microscopy gold.

My reason here today is hoping to gain more information about heap leaching, I had saw lot of vietnamese doing heap-leach here and are very successful.
There are using active-carbon to recover the value in the pregnant solution but personally i wish i could recovered the value using Merrill-Crowe method.
I had access to a few million tons of ore assayed from 3.5 to 12 ppm, All the sample and assay was done by a professional. 

After visiting some vietnamese heap site and lot of reading i had no problem about the set up but one thing i could not found information on reading or i could had miss it was the cyanide solution, I need information on how much solution should i need to heap leach 100,000 tonnes of ore. As i understand when i delivered the cyanide solution to the heap it will partially stay on the heap and refuse to come down to the pregnant pond because the solution will eventually saturated the dry ore, Should i make a new solution in another pond and pump it to the heap again until the solution in the pregnant pond balance the heap?

If anyone here can give me some guildness about this issue and the common problem occur in heap leaching?

Thanks


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## butcher (Sep 7, 2013)

Franciz,

I am curious to hear a little more about this gold cube sluice, I have not heard of one before your post, (it has been some time since I have been to the mining supply stores, maybe with all of this gold fever they have a lot more tools I need to go see), I Googled a picture of the gold cube, to me it looks like a series of P-trap trays one stacked upon the other, working similar to a sluice box and on a blue bowl type principle, do you know if it will work any better than other sluice box methods for fine gold?
I can pan gold as fine as I can see it (pre-screening for size helps with the really fine gold), will this gold cube capture more of the fine gold than you can separate with panning?
or is it just a tool to run more material through faster (than panning)?

I know you have been a good member for several years, and I also know you will search and work hard for your answers, I do not know anyone who does heap leaching with cyanide (at least in this part of the country), maybe one of our other members have some knowledge or information to share in on a discussion on this subject.


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## shaftsinkerawc (Sep 7, 2013)

Welcome Franciz - How fine did you grind your material too?

The Gold Cube is just a faster way of processing your material. And just like all other recovery devices benefits from screened material. I screen to -30mesh or it plugs up. I also modified to a fluid riffle feed trap and added neo... magnets to remove magnetics.


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## Franciz (Sep 8, 2013)

Hello my friend Butcher :lol: ,

Personally i found out that gold cube is very good in catching the very fine gold, To me it seems to work better than other sluices box. I had the four layer type with a screen on top that come with the G.C with this G.C i can capture almost 100% of the fine gold. The fine gold i means was just like an eyes of an small ant...lol... But in the end it still need panning but it has left only a bowl full from a few hundreds pound. The key is to run it slowly and use the full set(With the top layer) To me it is prefect but only a few tonnes a day.

:lol:


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## butcher (Sep 8, 2013)

Franciz,

I would think grinding and mechanically processing the ore to capture what you can, and then re-sell your tailings to someone who does leaching, this way you get gold and money from the ore without the headache, cost of setup, dangers, toxic waste, and all of the other problems involved of leaching the ore yourself.

Whatever you choose I wish you luck.


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## rusty (Sep 8, 2013)

Franciz said:


> Rusty,
> Look at my question and you replies again, I know what you means but your reply just don't make sense to me. You send me a link to google search, Do you mean i should do a search in google before asking in this forum? It your answer is yes then please allow me to ask you how do you know i had not search through google before asking?
> 
> Personally i don't like the way you reply, What do you think if you were me? If all the process could just be understood in just a click in google search then why is this forum use for? I thought this forum is a place where we can share experiences with each and others but why am i getting an answer like you?
> ...



Reason I gave the google link is because I knew your forum search would not produce favorable results. No one to date has had a successful answer to processing ore, the one geochemist we did have that could have possibly given you an answer got run off.


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## rabbit (Sep 12, 2013)

butcher said:


> Franciz,
> 
> I am curious to hear a little more about this gold cube sluice, I have not heard of one before your post, (it has been some time since I have been to the mining supply stores, maybe with all of this gold fever they have a lot more tools I need to go see), I Googled a picture of the gold cube, to me it looks like a series of P-trap trays one stacked upon the other, working similar to a sluice box and on a blue bowl type principle, do you know if it will work any better than other sluice box methods for fine gold?
> I can pan gold as fine as I can see it (pre-screening for size helps with the really fine gold), will this gold cube capture more of the fine gold than you can separate with panning?
> ...


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## Ali (Sep 15, 2013)

Franciz said:


> Dear Artart47,
> 
> Thank you for welcoming me to the forum.
> 
> ...




IN heap leaching companies uses a weak cyanide solution comparing to tank agitation process, as far as I remember the standard concentration of cyanide leaching solution should be around 500ppm, increases according to the ore type (as it may contain elements that consume the cyanide). a column test would help you a lot determining how percolation would take place


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