Gold tailings heap leaching and recovery of gold from tailings abroad

1. Gold tailings heap leaching

A small heap leaching test was carried out on the amalgam -flotation tailings in the Andi gold mine in Sanmenxia City. A total of 1640t tailings were piled up. The gold content of the tailings was 4~5g/t. After the heap leaching, the gold content of the final tailings was obtained. 0.7g/t, leaching rate 80.56%, carbon adsorption rate 99.30%, desorption rate 99.30%, total recovery rate 79.44%.

Second, foreign countries recover gold from tailings

South Africa is the world's largest gold producer and the first country to start recovering gold from tailings on a large scale. In South Africa, there are an estimated 3.4 billion tons of gold ore tailings with a gold content of 0.2 to 2 g/t, and an annual output of about 80 million tons of tailings. Currently, 12 of the 19 flotation plants in South Africa are processing tailings. Among them, 6 treatments recycle old tailings, and 6 treat tailings in the production process, from which gold is recovered. South Africa built the world's largest tailings reprocessing project in 1985 (Angl0-American's Ergo tailings treatment plant), which can process 2 million tons of tailings per month.