Abstract
This paper is a brief overview of the role of inducing the nucleated electro winning of copper by using iron electrodes in electrocoagulation (EC) process. Cyanide compounds are widely used in gold ore processing plants in order to facilitate the extraction and subsequent concentration of the precious metal. Owing to cyanide solution employed in gold processing, effluents generated have high contents of free cyanide as well as copper cyanide complexes, which lend them a high degree of toxicity. In this regard, two options for the treatment of cyanide barren solutions has been used; in two ways; first for cyanide destruction by oxidation with the use of the EC process, in theory, has the advantage of decomposing cyanide at the anode and collecting copper simultaneously by a sludge of copper magnetic iron. In both cases excellent performance can be achieved using the high capacity of the bipolar iron EC technology. We found that it is possible to reduce the copper cyanide complex from 720 mg·l－1 to below 10 mg·l－1 within 20 minutes.
Highlights
Due to the dwindling resources of simple cyanide extractable gold deposits, a large proportion of the gold processed in the 21st century will be recovered from complex gold ores, many of which will contain soluble copper minerals
Owing to cyanide solution employed in gold processing, effluents generated have high contents of free cyanide as well as copper cyanide complexes, which lend them a high degree of toxicity
We found that it is possible to reduce the copper cyanide complex from 720 mg·l−1 to below 10 mg·l−1 within 20 minutes
Summary
Due to the dwindling resources of simple cyanide extractable gold deposits, a large proportion of the gold processed in the 21st century will be recovered from complex gold ores, many of which will contain soluble copper minerals. It has been found that the majority of copper minerals including copper oxides, carbonates, sulfides (with the exception of chalcopyrite) and native copper are highly soluble in cyanide solutions [2] These copper containing minerals are problematic because, when ores containing such minerals are leached with cyanide to recover the gold, copper dissolves to form stable copper cyanide complexes. It is necessary to reduce the amount of copper, especially in leaching circuits, in order to increases the dissolution of gold and silver, to achieve this goal it is possible to remove the copper from barren solution after Merril-Crowe process using the electrocoagulation process (EC) This process can be interesting for the copper cyanide removal from processed solutions after the Merrill Crowe process, has low cost of operation and investment
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