Poster (EARTH)

[PE1-084] Electrolytic Recovery of Gold and Cyanide Destruction

○Mooki Bae^1,2, Soo-kyung Kim^1,2 (1. University of Science and Technology, 2. Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources)

Keywords:Electrolysis, Recovery, Gold, Destruction, Cyanide

Cyanide is a toxic species that is found mostly in industrial effluents generated by metallurgical operations. Despite many studies on lixiviant to replace toxic cyanide, cyanidation is still used commercially to extract the gold from around wolrd. The concentration of gold in the leach liquor is as low as 10g/ton or less, so it should be concentrated by adsorption, solvent extraction, and ion exchange before the reduction process such as cementation(Merrill-Crowe) and electrowinning. The aim of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of recovering the gold and destroying the cyanide by cyclone electrolysis from gold bearing cyanide solutions. Studies have been carried out using cyclone electrolysis at various parameters such as applied voltage, flow rate, pH, concentration of gold and cyanide. ~95% gold was recovered with decreasing cyanide concentration at following conditions: 50mg/l, 0.2% NaCN, flow rate 4L/min, 10.5~11 pH. The study revealed that the recovery of gold and the destruction of cyanide from gold bearing cyanide solution was plausible approach using cyclone electrolytic cell.