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Experimental study on deep calcium removal from large‑scale heap leaching circulating solution

  • English Author:
  • Bai Yang

  • Unit:
  • (Inner Mongolia Pacific Mining Co., Ltd.)
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Abstract:

In response to the accumulation of base metal cations such as calcium and magnesium during long-term heap leaching operations at a gold mine, which negatively affects production efficiency and quality, a combined technical scheme was proposed involving preliminary calcium removal from barren solution using carbon dioxide and deep calcium removal from pregnant solution using a scale inhibitor. Experimental results determined the optimal process parameters: adjusting the pH of the barren solution to 11.5-12.0, maintaining the carbon dioxide injection pressure at 0.25 MPa, and setting the reaction time to 1.5 h. Under these conditions, the preliminary calcium removal efficiency from the bar-ren solution can stably exceed 90 %. By adding the optimized DN3 scale inhibitor to the pregnant solution at a dosage of 900 mg/L, the calcium adsorption on gold-loaded carbon was reduced by 1.76 percentage points, while the gold adsorp-tion rate increased by 13.38 percentage points, and the cost of acid washing regeneration was significantly reduced. Continu-ous testing demonstrated that this combined technique effectively reduces the impact of calcium and magnesium ions, enhances gold adsorption, and plays a significant role in improving the production process.

Keywords:

heap leaching circulating solution; calcium removal by carbon dioxide; scale inhibitor; adsorption enhancement; gold metallurgy; activated carbon