THE INCREASED ACTIVITY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIOSULFATE BASED PROCESSES FOR GOLD RECOVERY

摘要

Thiosuifate has been researched as an alternative lixiviant to cyanide for several decades now. CSIRO's patented breakthrough in the elution of gold thiosuifate from strong base ion exchange resins has seen activity in the development of thiosuifate based processes increase recently. Particularly, the research and development has become focused on the whole process with some of these process developments at the stage of being piloted or triaiied. As evident from the thiosuifate process developments presented in this paper, the oxidant system employed depends on the ore to be treated and thus each process requires customising. The process developments discussed in this paper include 1) copper-ammonia-thiosulfate process for gravity concentrates; 2) oxygen-thiosulfate process for pyritic ores and concentrates; and 3) iron-EDTA-thiosulfate process for in-situ leaching of oxidised gold ores.