At the San José mine the gold and silver minerals concentrate by floating.From the concentrates, 60% is commercialized and 40% is leached withcyanide for the production of dore bars.The improvement in the quality of the concentrates questioned thecurrent intensive conditions of the cyanidation process. In order to optimizethe hydrometallurgical processes, in the last year, after the design anddevelopment of an experimental test program, research was aimed atobtaining a mathematical model for the extraction of gold and silver thatconsider the phenomenological interactions of concentrate treatment byintensive cyanidation and in the continuous reactors.This paper presents the main results from the stages of the research andindustrial implementation, increased by 2% extraction for gold and 1% forsilver, with decreases in consumption of 28% sodium cyanide and 44% ofhydrogen peroxide. These decreases are important for reducing operationalcosts and by the timely deactivation of free cyanide, which stops being asimultaneous reaction in the cyanidation process, to become as expected,the main reaction in the cyanide detoxification's step of the process'stailings before its final disposal.These results include a number of secondary advantages achieved withthe available resources, avoiding for example, reducing the particle size andthe use of new oxidizing agents. Among these advantages there is pHstability, lower dissolution of cyanogen (copper and lead), and decreasedretention time in reactors. The actual kinetic validated by the model allowsfor parameters to be set based on the quality ranges concentrated withoutsacrificing current volume levels or pregnant solution quality. Theseimprovements are an addition to the efforts of the mining unit to achieve100% production in dore bars, cyaniding the total of the concentrates.
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