The recovery of metal cyanides by ion exchange resins

Abstract

Cyanide is used extensively in the mining industry to leach gold and silver from their ores. Cyanide, in the form of sodium or potassium cyanide, is added in excess to that required theoretically due to equilibrium and kinetic considerations in the leaching step. This results in free cyanide and various other cyanide complexes reporting to the effluent streams of these operations In this study the removal of these species from solution by means of ion exchange resins was investigated Equilibrium conditions, kinetic parameters and the competitive exchange nature of the process was evaluated. The experimental work focused on contacting the various resins individually in a batch reactor with free cyanide, Iron cyanide and copper cyanide complexes. The experimental data obtained was found to be well explained by the Freundlich-type multiand single-component isotherms. Furthermore, mass transfer parameters were investigated revealing that ceI1ain cyanide species outperform others kinetically in the ion exchange process. During this study it was shown that ion exchange processes could be effective in effluent clean-up of those streams containing cyanide complexes