Additional of NaCl on Chloride Leaching of Gold Ore from Indonesian Artisanal Mining

An alternative method of amalgamation to extract gold in small-scale industries was investigated by means of chloride-ion-based solution leaching. In this study, the addition of NaCl and optimization of chloride-ion-based leaching of gold was analyzed by using the Taguchi Method. Indonesia gold ore processed from artisanal mining was utilized in this study. The solutions of HCl (11.6 mol/L)-H2O2 (1 vol%) were used as lixiviants. The effects of temperature, pulp ratio, leaching time, and NaCl addition were examined. The optimum leaching condition was predicted using a signal to noise ratio and the influences of given input parameters were studied through the analysis of variance. More than 78% extraction of gold was achieved after 3 hours using pulp ratio of 0.5, a temperature of 75 degrees C, and the addition of 0.05 M of NaCl.