Abstract
Hydrometallurgical researchers, and other professionals alike, invest significant amounts of time reading scientific articles, technical notes, and other scientific documents, while looking for the most relevant information for their particular research interest. In an attempt to save the researcher’s time, this study presents an information retrieval tool using case-based reasoning. The tool was built for comparing scientific articles concerning cyanide-free leaching of gold ores/concentrates/tailings. Altogether, 50 cases of experiments were gathered in a case base. 15 different attributes related to the treatment of the raw material and the leaching conditions were selected to compare the cases. The attributes were as follows: Pretreatment, Overall method, Complexant source, Oxidant source, Complexant concentration, Oxidant concentration, Temperature, pH, Redox-potential, Pressure, Materials of construction, Extraction, Extraction rate, Reagent consumption, and Solid-liquid ratio. The resulting retrieval tool (LeachSim) was able to rank the scientific articles according to their similarity with the user’s research interest. Such a tool could eventually aid the user in finding the most relevant information, but not replace thorough understanding and human expertise.
Highlights
In recent years, cyanide leaching of gold ores has become politically and environmentally more controversial
1–5 were entered into the LeachSim model, implemented in myCBR
Scientific articles in the field of cyanide-free gold leaching were formalized so their findings can be compared by an AI application named LeachSim
Summary
Cyanide leaching of gold ores has become politically and environmentally more controversial. New alternatives have been investigated broadly [1,2] and one cyanide-free process, thiosulfate leaching of gold, is utilized on industrial scale by Barrick Gold Corporation [3,4]. This article aims to create a retrieval tool for uncovering the most relevant research information about cyanide-free gold leaching based on the leaching process, material treatment, and achieved results. There are several research engines available for information retrieval, such as Google Scholar, and databases of peer-reviewed literature, such as Scopus, but the retrieval of articles within these tools is often based on exact matches. If one searches for “cyanide-free”, the articles with the phrase “non-cyanide” are likely left out from the top results
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