AgreeDeano said:The hypochlorite leach rate is between cyanide and aqua regia.
For an ore comparison, generally hypochlorite is around 3 times as fast as cyanide but can be sped up by having more hypochlorite present.
This usually means leach times in hours rather than days.
The leach rate is controlled by the rate at which the oxidant can access the gold so some form of agitation is usual.
The agitation can be applied by stirring or by pumping the liquor, the former for ores and the latter for component leaching.
As you stated, the leach rate increases with temperature as does the evaporation rate.
The maximum loading of gold onto carbon is dependent on both the form of the gold complexes and the tenor of the gold liquor( think concentration of gold in the liquor).
The higher the gold tenor the greater the loading possible.
Gold chloride will load to a higher level and do so faster than gold cyanide.
The gold cyanide loading is an adsorption system whereas the gold chloride is mainly a reduction mechanism.
This means that gold chloride will reduce to gold metal on activated carbon and will do so to levels where the gold particles will fall off the carbon. Great care must be taken with carbon loaded from gold chloride not to get to this stage.
The maximum gold loading levels onto carbon are also very dependent on the levels of other metal species present in the leach liquors as these other metals will take up sites on the carbon and prevent gold from loading on these sites.
Temperature and pH are also among the major loading controllers.
In CIP circuits the gold loadings are anywhere from 2,000 to 20,000 ppm on the carbon depending on the mine conditions.
In artificial laboratory conditions under acid pH and low temperature gold loadings over 200,000 ppm have been achieved.
Note that gold cyanide complexes are stable under acid conditions, it is only when the acid conditions are strongly oxidising that the cyanide complex is degraded.
Deano
labalkeny, please do not use text lingo on the forum. Many of our members have to use translation software to read, and things like "u" and "ur" do not translate well.labalkeny said:if u were out prospecting hundreds of miles away in gold land and realize ur ph meter battery is dead. and the leach is already in water, a bag full of litmus paper is in the car together with its color chart coresponding to each ph scale from 1 till 14. how would u use litmus paper here?
Davelabalkeny said:Thanks Deano.
If I may ask. how is leaching at a specific pH 7& 8 different from
" Simultaneous sulfide oxidation and gold leaching of a refractory gold concentrate by chloride–hypochlorite solution Article in Minerals Engineering · September 2013'
is there no simultaneous oxidation and leach at pH 7 & 8? this guys start there Leach from pH 11 down to around 8.
And how does one tell all the Ag and Au has been leached by the HYPOCHLORITE system and in how much time?
labalkeny said:thanks Dave!
Thanks Deano.
If I may ask. how is leaching at a specific pH 7&8 different from
" Simultaneoussulfideoxidationandgold leachingofarefractorygoldconcentrateby chloride–hypochloritesolution Article in MineralsEngineering·September2013'
is there no simultaneous oxidation and leach at ph7&8? this guys start there Leach from pH 11 down to around 8.
Jon, this thread has already been cleaned up and archived in the Library. From time to time, as new posts add to the content, and time allows, one of the moderators will undertake to copy the thread to an area where we can work on it, move the new, deserving posts to the Library copy of the thread, then clean up the detritus of the process.anachronism said:I know we're helping this new chap here with forum posting and it's a great thing to do however is there a way we can avoid clogging up this brilliant thread with this Dave?
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