Copper is a problem for gold processing using cyanidation as it causes increased cyanide consumption and creates significant environmental risk. This is due to the formation of toxic copper cyanide species. The SART (sulfidisation, acidification, recycle, and thickening) process is an effective way to overcome this problem as it can recover cyanide and copper as separate products from a clarified tailings stream after cyanidation. This has led to the SART process gaining popularity for cyanide and copper recovery around the world. There is, however, an apparent lack of information on the optimum operating conditions for SART.Factorial experimentation and economic analysis of the process has been conducted. Screening and factorial design investigations found that SART is largely affected by sulfide to copper moiar ratio and cyanide to copper molar ratio. The economic analysis identified the optimum operating conditions for the SART process as a sulfide to copper molar ratio of around 0.56, a pH of 4, and minimised cyanide to copper molar ratio. Price variation of reagents and products has little impact on this optimum but does have a large effect on economics when SART is not operated at optimal conditions.
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