SULPHIDE GOLD FLOTATION CONCENTRATE CIL LEACHING

911MPE offers all the major components of this complete process plant designed using these key design parameters:

Using gravity to supplement either flotation or cyanidation is a well established practice in the gold industry. It differs from other recovery circuits in that most of the gold recovered by gravity would be recovered in any case by the circuit downstream, be it flotation or cyanidation. The economic justification of gravity is therefore based on small margins (for example, a net smelter return of gravity gold of 99%, as opposed to 94% for flotation). It was easily demonstrated when either flotation or cyanidation were relatively inefficient processes, and labour costs low (as gravity can be labour intensive). Over the past fourty years, the introduction of better flotation machines (flash, column, high capacity), more effective collectors, and better control systems has increased flotation’s metallurgical performance, thereby decreasing the incentive for gravity recovery. Cyanidation technology has undergone similar changes, with the advent of activated carbon, oxygen and lead nitrate addition, and improved impeller design.

Today, gravity can remain an attractive option only inasmuch as it can be implemented with very low capital and operating costs. This has resulted in a relative shift away from gold gravity recovery (except for alluvial deposits), in the seventies and eighties. For example, as of the early nineties, gold gravity recovery has disappeared from the typical flow sheet. The advent of the iCON Concentrator, at the beginning of the eighties, foreshadowed a resurgence of gravity recovery, as gold’s grinding and classification behaviour makes it possible to achieve adequate gold recoveries with very simple, iCON based, gravity circuits.