VAL LEACHING AND ELUTION PLANT

GOLD PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY

Eng. Gilay Shamika & Eng.Honorat Manang

Eng. Shamika and Eng.Honorat Manang © 2015

1. VAT LEACHING AND ELUTION PLANT TECHNOLOGY
MANUAL

Abstract

This Manual is basically concerned with process description of Vat Leaching

and elution process of gold extraction. The report is tailored to all stakeholders
so as to provide an overview and understanding of the process. The report is
applicable to all miners in need as well. Basic information necessary for
process designing stage as well as advantages and disadvantages of the process
over the tank leaching has been outlined.
2. Contents
1. Title
page…………………………………………………………………
………………………………… 1
2. Acknowledgement
………………………………………………………………………
………. 2
3. Abstract
………………………………………………………………………
…………………………. 3
4. Contents
………………………………………………………………………
……………………….. 4
5. Introduction of VAT-Leaching
…………………………………………………………. 5
6. VAT – Leaching Process
………………………………………………………………………
6
6.1. Leaching (Gold Dissolution)
……………………………………………………. 7
6.2. Carbon (Gold Adsorption)
…………………………………………………………8
6.3. Elution (Gold Desorption) & Electro wining
…………………….10
6.4. Washing and Smelting
……………………………………………………………….12
7. Quality Control and Assurance
……………………………………………………….13
8. Conclusion and Recommendations
……………………………………………….14
3. Introduction of Vat-Leaching

Vat leaching has been around since Roman times, but had become viable in
1896, when cyanide leaching began in earnest with the Merrill-Crowe Process.
In an article in the Engineering and Mining Journal in December 1999, Lou
Cope described the first vat leaching at Homes take in 1901, which later
improved the process in 1906 by adding a desliming circuit. Traditional vat
leaching is a batch process, however, with materials handling being of high
cost. Some vat leaching continues to this day, especially in the copper
industry, where such plants as Mantos Blancos in Chile continue to operate.
The method used is the same as was first introduced in 1927 on nitrates, with
ore loaded into the vats for batch leaching, then discharged by gantry-mounted
clamshells. It is a leach/drain/wash/drain cycle that conceivably could be
used with a detoxification cycle in gold leaching and would allow for stackable
tailings. The operating costs in most cases, however, would be prohibitive.
Tanzania is the fourth largest producer of gold in Africa behind South Africa,
Ghana and Mali. This has attracted major companies such as Ashanti
Goldfields, AngloGold; Barrick Gold Corp; Placer Dome Inc., as well as a host of
small scale miners. Currently no large scale mine is using this method of
leaching but small scale miners due to capital limitation, they have employed
VAT-Leaching (VL) process which is cheaper than Tank Leaching (TL) used in
modern industries.

In Tanzania the technology started at GEITA by Chacha and Baraka using Low
Pressure and Inbuilt Electrowining Elution Columns. Currently there are
other type of High Pressure and Separate Electrowining Elution Columns.
This Manual will provide a detailed illustration of VAT-Leaching process as
carried by small scale miners in Tanzania which is the second gold extraction
process used by small scale miners after amalgamation.

The process has eagerly raged all over the country where there are deposits of
gold. It is the duty of Ministry of Energy and Minerals (MEM) and Tanzania
Minerals Audit Agency (TMAA) to keep addressing and advocate the advantages
of this technology for more Tanzanians to invest especially by having a meeting
with Economic Processing Zone Authority and TIC to sell this idea.

4. Vat-Leaching Process

Vat leaching can be described as leaching in a bathtub inside a building. In Vat

leaching the ore usually after size reduction (either as a finely crushed or a
coarsely ground and de-slimed) is manually loaded into the vats. Vats are
tanks built by bricks, cement and sand may be rectangular or circular with a
partial filter floor. Picture 1 and 2 shows types of vats commonly used. Vat
leaching is operated in a batch fashion by small scale miner, but continuous
vat leaching is currently available in the market.
Picture 1: Leaching VATs Construction (Rectangular)

Picture 2: Leaching VATs Operational (Circular)

 Head
Head
Tank
Tank

Leaching Leaching Leaching

VATLeaching
TANK1 VATLeaching
TANK2 VATLeaching
TANK3
VAT TANK1 VAT TANK2 VAT TANK3

Carbon
Carbon
Bed/House
Bed/House

Barren
Barren
Solution
Solution
Tank
Tank

Sketch 1: Simple Vat leaching Process flow diagram by Eng. Shamika, G.C

5. Leaching (Gold Dissolution)

Once Vat is loaded with ore, is flooded with a leaching solution of a desired
cyanide concentration (usually 600 to 1000 ppm) and pH between 10 to 11 at
ambient operating conditions through the filter section of the floor or added to
the top of the ore charge.
Picture 3: Left is the loading of tails read for leaching process, while right hand side is the picture of tails
which have already turned into solution (dissolution) by reaction of gold present into tails and cyanide.

The later method is commonly practiced as it is cheaper and easier. Lime is

added to maintained pH at required level to prevent formation of deadly gas
Hydrogen Cyanide. These sharp injections of fluid accelerate dissolution of the
gold due to the dynamic contact between the cyanide solution and solid ore
particles. After passing through the ore, the solution is drawn off through the
filtered floor via PVC pipes equipped with valves for solution flow rate control. It
can either recycled back into the vats or taken to the next step of the recovery
process. Residency time in vats is varying between 3 to 5 days, there after vats
need to be offloaded and prepared for next batch. This is determined by
checking gold content in solution drawn from the vat by Color Test.

Picture 4: Color test to confirm presence of gold

In vat leaching typically a coarser material is placed in the vat for leaching,
this reduces the cost of size reduction. Vats usually do not contain much
internal equipment, such as agitators, baffles hence aeration is limited and
therefore oxygen which is important for gold dissolution. Hydrogen Peroxide is
sometimes added in small amount in the vats leaching to add more oxygen.
Some of reagents might be required as well during leaching depending on ore
nature as determined by bench scale metallurgical testing.

6. Carbon (Gold Adsorption)

In all operating VAT leaching, the solution is drowned from the vats to next
step and not recycled. Pregnant solution from vats is taken to the next step of
recovery which is gold adsorption to carbons. The solution is passing through
carbon bed which can either be a cemented basin with several chambers as
shown in picture 3 or carbon columns as in picture 4. The later method is
costly due to power requirement for pumping throughout the process hence is
not advisable.

Picture 5: Cemented Carbon bed

 Picture 6: Carbon Bed in Column

The carbons are water washed to remove fines particles and dust before
loading them manually to the basin or column. Usually 1 ton of carbon is
loaded at one time which can be used to adsorb gold from several batches of
leach trains of 5 to 10 vats depending on head grade of the ore. In cemented
basin since there is no pumping, regular stirring of carbons to expose fresh
surface area is needed. The adsorption is effective with pH 9.5 to 10.5 for safe
operation with cyanide but not higher under presence of high calcium ions
hence lime is used. Once carbons are saturated (cannot absorb more gold), this
is determined by checking gold content in outgoing solution (barren solution)
are manually offloaded and packed in bags. Most of the small scale miners
don’t have carbon stripping facility hence they have to hire the service from
others. Those who have facility, are normally located away from the site
therefore packed carbon bags need to be transported to a stripping facility.

After stripping, carbons can be used 2 to 3 times until its activity is low when
is discarded and fresh one is used instead. Currently, there is no facility for
carbon regeneration to save for small scale miner. This project is still under
study by some groups.
7. Elution (Gold desorption) and Electrowining

Carbon stripping in small mining scale is combined together with electro

wining. The stripping column is divided into two parts, the bottom one is
elution column and the top part is electro wining cell. See picture 5 below.

Picture 7: Elution and Electrowining Column

7.1 Elution
The carbon stripping is running at the atmospheric pressure under elevated
temperature (about 95 to 98oC) with pH above 12. Desorption require presence
of Sodium ions (no calcium) hence caustic is used to maintain the required pH
instead of lime. Water is added to the column to ¾ of the column, and then
carbon is manually loaded into column from received bags. Cyanide and
caustic are added such that a solution of 1% sodium hydroxide and 0.1%
sodium cyanide is obtained. The solution is circulated in up flow through a
stationary bed of loaded carbon at a flow rate of about 2 bed volumes per hour
at about 95oC. Gold that was previously adsorbed on the carbon is desorbed
from the carbon by a reversal of the adsorption kinetics. The solution is further
pushed in up flow to the top part of the column which is Electro wining cell.
The column is designed to accommodate 1 ton of carbon and residency time of
48 to 72 hours is required.

7.2 Electrowining

Picture 8: Top part of column (Electro wining cell assemble)

Gold is recovered from pregnant (gold bearing) solution by the process of

electro winning. An electric current is passed through the solution causing
solid gold to plate out on steel wool cathodes. Electro winning is performed in
cells, constructed of metal plates and insulated with non-conducting plastic
materials (Picture 6). The cell contains a set of cathodes (negative electrodes
with steel wool) and anodes (positive electrodes on top of insulator) immersed
in the gold bearing eluate delivered from the elution circuit (bottom part). The
eluate acts as a conductor between the cathodes and anodes. When the
rectifier is switched on (from the control box) the electro winning circuit is
complete and current begins to flow from the cathodes to the anodes. The
efficiency of the electro winning cells is also significant to stripping efficiency.
High levels of gold in recycled eluant result in a reduction in stripping rate.
Thus the following factors are monitored for efficient electro winning:-

7.3 Cell Voltage

The voltage and current that must be applied to a cell for most efficient gold
recovery depends on a number of factors including eluate conductivity, pH,
temperature and the concentration of all the different species in solution. Most
cells within Lake Zone operate with voltage from 3.0 to 5.5V for optimum gold
recovery.

7.4 Cell Current

The cell amperage (amps) is basically a measure of the amount of current, or

electrons, flowing through the cell. As one electron is required for the
deposition of one gold atom, then the amount of current determines how much
gold can be electrowon.

The rate of gold deposition increases with increasing current, up to a limiting

amount, at which point the maximum cell current efficiency is obtained. Above
this point the current is consumed by other side reactions such as the
evolution of hydrogen and the deposition of other metals such as copper, and
does not contribute to further gold deposition. The required amperage is
determined by bench scale metallurgical testing and entered into Control box
as control set point. The output of the rectifiers is maintained at the set point
by a control loop. The optimum amperage is somewhere in the range of 40 to
60 amps.

7.5 Solution Conductivity

Cell performance is also affected by solution conductivity. Caustic is added to

the solution prior to electro winning to improve conductivity to enhance cell
performance. Caustic is also added to raise the solution pH to prevent the
corrosion of the anodes, and limit the evolution of hydrogen gas.

7.6 Washing and Smelting

Picture 9: Cathode soaked in Sulfuric acid and diluted with water (Gold, Silver and iron Oxide precipitate)
Steel wool cathode is removed from the cell and soaked into Sulphiric acid
which results in precipitation. Precipitate is rinsed by water several times until
is free of acid and all water are poured off. The precipitate is then placed on a
charcoal stove using aluminum pot until is dry. The dried solids are ready for
smelting. The cutting torch flame and crucible is used as a smelter. Dried solid
is mixed with fluxes before smelting with the aim to complete oxidation of
impurities and remove them from gold. Fluxes added are mainly Silica (SiO2)
and Borax (Na2B407.10H20).

The smelted material after being cool a little bit, a chipping hammer is used to
knock of slugs from its surface and wire brush is used to clean the gold bar
further. The obtained gold bar is weighed and secured ready for selling.

Picture 10: Gold obtained after smelting

8. Quality Control and Assurance

In order to ensure production is running smooth and reactions are not
compromised, there are sets of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in place which
must be met all the time. Some control measures are employed for verifications
with assistance from laboratory personnel.

The following samples are taken and measured for corresponding test as
shown:-
 8.1 Vat tanks
Out flow solution (Pregnant solution) from all operating Vat tanks will be taken
individually for each tank in two hours interval and tested for pH, Cyanide
concentration and Gold content.

8.2 Combined solution entering carbon room.

This is combination of solution from all operating Vat tanks entering the
carbon room. This will be taken in two hours’ time interval and tested for pH,
cyanide concentration and gold content.

8.3 Barren Solution

This is the solution leaving carbon room to barren solution tank. This is taken
in every two hours and tested for pH, cyanide concentration and gold content

8.4 Head/Solution Tank

This is the overhead tank which is fed from barren solution tank after mixing
required amount of cyanide and lime. The tank is used to spray on all Vat
tanks by gravity. The head tank sample will be taken every time when there is
new mixed solution and will be checked for pH and cyanide concentration.

9. Conclusion and Recommendations

Vat leaching process is very easy and cost effective method of gold recovery due
to its cost cutting in size reduction stage as required by other extraction
methods. In order to get promising results from this method, each project
should be evaluated individually to determine the best procedure for the
particular ore and site specific circumstances.

From experience obtained from small scale miners practices, there is still big
room to improve efficiency of the process and obtain better results such as de-
sliming or agglomeration of ore to facilitate solution transport, introduction of
acid washing of carbon, carbon regeneration, use of continuous vat leaching
process, etc.
In a tank leach the slurry is moved, while in a vat leach the solids remain in
the vat, and solution is moved which reduce wear and tear of tanks. In tank
leaching the material is ground sufficiently fine to form a slurry, which can flow
under gravity or when pumped. In vat leaching typically a coarser material is
placed in the vat for leaching, which reduces the cost of size reduction. Tanks
are typically equipped with agitators, baffles, gas introduction equipment
designed to maintain the solids in suspension in the slurry, and achieve
leaching. Vats usually do not contain much internal equipment, and hence no
agitation and good aeration which cause more residency time.

Pressure Elution columns with separate electrowining cell is more encouraged.

Zimbabwe and South Africa are mostly using this type of Elution columns. We
recommend in a near future, the medium miners to use this model rather than
what they have; the combined Elution and electrowining cell inbuilt column
which cause less surface area for reaction of electrolysis to be sufficiently
complete. The good example is PAMOJA MINING Co.Ltd Elution Plant
Columns.