Study and development of advanced technology for silver sorption recovery from multicomponent leaching solutions

We thoroughly studied chemo-physical mechanisms of selective silver recovery from multicomponent cyanide solutions with polycondensate anionites. Proposed study was aimed at developing technological pattern of silver sorption recovery from cyanide solutions produced in ores and concentrates leaching processes. The ion-exchange silver recovery from cyanide solutions was performed with hard, chemically stable polycondensate anionites series “Ional”. The Ional А-1 and Ional А-1а were selected due to their earlier proved unreactiveness to gold cyanide complexes while they are effective sorbents of nonferrous metals cyanide complexes, at the same time the Ional А-7 shows a higher gold sorption capacity and improved kinetics in gold as compared to the AM-2B. Completed study proved that the Ional А-1 and Ional А-1а weakly sorbed silver while they effectively sorbed associated manganese, sulfur and arsenic anions; at that, the Ional А-7 showed higher sorption and kinetic capacity in silver as compared to the AM-2B. Scaled-up laboratory tests of leaching solution of gold-containing flotation concentrate, mg/dm3: 10.0 Au; 6.4 Ag-silver holding capacity of Ional А-7 was increased by 19.8 times as compared to the same capacity without purification and amounted 81.4 mg/g by precious metals. Individual gold and silver eluates, which rich fractions contained: Au-3500 mg/dm3, Ag-4020 mg/dm3, were produced through desorption process.