dealing with ore that contains iron oxide by 90% and some light sulphates

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mohamedmsud

Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2018
Messages
16
What is the best way to deal with the material that contains iron oxide by 90% and some light sulphates, the available methods are mercury, cyanide, thioria and aqua regia .. Gold is present in the very fine picture, may not succeed mercury, the ton contains 100 grams of gold According to laboratory detection of the material
 
I suggest a prior investigation with one of these methods:
Dense medium separation
Centrifuging
Flotation
in order to locate the richest fraction
 
I highly suggest to use cyanide for recovering your fine gold in that iron oxide ore. Cyanide is efficient in fine gold.
 
Out of curiosity, what other metals does cyanide pick up besides gold and silver ?

I'm trying to find a way to avoid dissolving copper, lead, tin, and aluminum.
 
Other than cyanide what are the options for recovering distributed gold?

I've got a bunch of ore where the larger particles of gold have been extracted but there is still a substantial amount of gold remaining in the ore. Upto 200g/t. Lots of iron and sulfur compounds as well. Practically zero silver or PGMs. Very little copper or other base metals.
 
I’m not a mining expert but if you have free gold then crushing and gravity separation seems logical if you don’t want to use cyanide and heap leaching which I would think would be the easiest and cheapest method, perhaps Deano can give you some other ideas if he feels like contributing to this thread.
 
When looking at recovery methods for a new mine your first approach is to see what methods are being used by other mines nearby.

Go and have a talk to the operators of these mines and see what sorts of recoveries they are getting.

Generally you look at doing the cheapest methods (gravity) first up.

See what recovery you get and what gold levels are in the gravity tails.

Secondly look at a float test to see if the gold is in the sulphide fraction, again see what gold levels are in the float tails.

Having done the above tests, you are now into the leaching options. These apply to leaching of either head ore or process tails.

The simplest is to have a nearby mine toll treat your ore.

Next is to run cyanide leaching tests.

If you do not want to or cannot use cyanide at the mine site your stated grade, very high, will allow you to transport the material very long distances to where you can get a permit or have some one else toll treat the ore.

Much depends on the ore reserves available and the possible mining rate per day.

Small reserves and/or slow throughput will put you into the hobby miner category.

The trouble with non-cyanide leaching methods is that the ones which are alkaline have other inherent problems, glossed over by their boosters, and the acid methods all require all wettable surfaces to be non metallic.

Usually the biggest problem is in the taking of representative samples of the ore for testing, it is in human nature to include the better looking ore areas rather than get truly representative samples.

Deano
 
Deano said:
Secondly look at a float test to see if the gold is in the sulphide fraction, again see what gold levels are in the float tails.

By this do you mean that the sulphide fraction is carried off by froth flotation? And if so is the concentrate from Froth flotation then smelted?
 
The sulphide fraction is separated from the rest of the ore if a sulphide float is done on the milled ore.

If the gold grade of the float concentrates is high enough then a smelt can be done on these cons.

If the grade is not high enough then the cons can be roasted or treated in other ways such as pressure oxidation or bio-oxidation before cyanide leaching for gold.

These alternative methods require large capital investments and/or expertise to be successful.

Some sulphide cons will cyanide leach quite readily without these treatments while others will be highly refractory.

Sometimes the gold in the sulphides can be cyanide leached in the head ore while the gold in the sulphide cons are refractory.

You have to do the test work to find out what method is best suited to your ore.

Deano
 
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