Beneficiation and hydrometallurgical processing of gold-containing sludge

Abstract

The research results of technogenic objects in the Far East of Russia, in particular, the silt of the settling pond "Chalgany" and the waste of the Chalganov kaolin plant are given. The presence of valuable components in the investigated objects is shown, in particular: gold, noble metals, rare earth elements. It is established that gold in the investigated objects is represented mainly by a difficult-to-extract finely dispersed class of fineness (<5 μm). The methods of preliminary concentration and hydrometallurgical processing, which allow extracting gold from the studied technogenic objects, are proposed. The effectiveness of noncyanide methods of ammonia-thiosulphate and thiocarbamide leaching was investigated. It is shown, that the efficiency of gold recovery from the silt of the settling pond “Chalgany” by the thiocarbamide method reaches 93.5%. It is established that the waste from the Chalganovskiy kaolin plant, after recovering the concentrate of precious metals from them, can serve as a raw material for the production of chemically pure silicon and silica, as well as aluminum, its compounds, and refractory fibrous materials.