The effect of flotation reagents on cyanidation, loading capacity and sorption kinetics of gold onto activated carbon

In the current study, the effect of flotation and dewatering reagents on cyanidation process, loading capacity and adsorption kinetics of gold onto activated carbon has been evaluated through a developed experimental program. The experimental results showed that the flotation reagents have a detrimental effect on the cyanidation process and this effect increases with increasing their concentrations. It was also clearly revealed that the occurrence of organic fouling influences the gold sorption kinetics onto activated carbon but not the loading capacity. By applying a reagent scheme, in which the dosage of flotation reagents is very high, the gold sorption kinetics onto an activated carbon severely decreased and the kinetic constant of gold sorption (k value) fell below 50 h(-1) This problem was overcome by applying the optimized reagent scheme in which the dosage of flotation reagents is set to a minimum required amount for the optimum recovery of Mouteh gold bearing sulfides. By using this reagent scheme, the fouling effect of flotation and dewatering reagents was negligible and the gold sorption kinetics was slightly decreased in comparison with the non-fouled carbons. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.