The Design of a 4 Electrode Flow Through Cell for the Online Analysis of Thiosulfate Concentration in Solutions Containing Copper and Ammonia.

摘要

Thiosulfate is a potential alternative lixiviant to cyanide in the recovery of gold.The addition of copper(II) ions is required in order to achieve acceptable gold leach rates,but this results in thiosulfate oxidation.The presence of copper ions also makes the determination of thiosulfate concentration by traditional techniques difficult in such solutions.A flow injection analysis (FIA) method has previously been developed utilising a purpose built electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) cell to measure silver mass loss as a function of thiosulfate concentration (1).The requirement of a quartz crystal and the need to regularly replenish silver on the electrode surface has resulted in the development of an alternative method which utilises a more robust analysis cell.The evaluation and development of this analysis technique is described in this paper.