Possibilities for the Environmental Processing of Gold-Bearing Ores

Separations

article

Michaela Sudova¹  Maria Kanuchova¹  Martin Sisol¹  Lubica Kozakova¹  Michal Marcin¹  Tomas Holub¹ 

[1] Faculty of Mining, Ecology, Process Control and Geotechnologies, Technical University of Kosice

关键词: gold;    tetrahedrite;    hydrometallurgy;    leaching;    heavy metals;    environment;   

DOI  :  10.3390/separations10070384

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This article will focus on the alkaline leaching of gold-bearing tetrahedrite concentrate in a solution containing sodium sulfide and sodium hydroxide. This selective leaching is followed by the leaching of heavy and waste metals into the solution, which may influence the physical properties and quality of the desired product, possibly causing environmental toxicity. At the same time, the amount of gold was observed during the leaching process to increase its content in the solid phase for the possibility of recovery and subsequent extraction of the precious metal. Sodium sulfide works very effectively on sulfide minerals which include tetrahedrite, and sodium hydroxide eliminates the hydrolysis of sulfur which slows leaching. The leaching kinetics were carried out with a duration of five hours, and based on volume sampling at certain time intervals from three samples, with the characteristic NaOH concentration, the leaching efficiency was observed from the results with atomic absorption spectrometry. The solid residue containing the tetrahedrite concentrate was analyzed through X-ray photoelectron analysis spectrometry, from which the % solids content was determined, and it is also known to deduce the leached amount of metals for each sample.

【 授权许可】

CC BY