Mineral Processing » Solutions » Gold CIP Processing Plant

Gold CIP Processing

The gold CIP (Carbon-in-Pulp) is widely used to extract gold from ore. It mainly involves using activated carbon to adsorb gold from a cyanide solution, then eluting and regenerating the carbon for reuse.

It is mainly suitable for beneficiating gold-containing oxidized ore with high slime content and containing carbon ore. Easy to operate, consumes little and the recovery rate is over 90%.

Gold CIP Process

Gold CIP (Carbon-in-Pulp) process uses activated carbon for adsorption based on oxidation leaching, which can increase the gold leaching rate. The main flow including crushing, grinding, leaching pretreatment, leaching, and activated carbon adsorption processing, gold-loaded carbon desorption and electrolytic stage, and tailing water recycle system.

Crushing & grinding: The gold ore is first crushed and ground to extremely fine particle size to match the size of the subsequent gold extraction process.
Leaching: Usually cyanide is added to the slurry as a leaching agent to help dissolve the gold in the ore.
Adsorption: It involves the introduction of activated carbon into the slurry, capable of selectively adsorbing gold from the slurry.
Carbon separation: A slurry containing gold-loaded carbon particles is passed through screens or filters to separate the carbon from the slurry.
Elution: It involves using chemical cleaning agents to strip the adsorbed gold from the carbon particles. It is primarily done by washing with a hot caustic/cyanide solution.
Electrolysis: An electric current causes gold to be electrochemically deposited on the cathode, forming solid metallic gold.
Smelting: The gold deposited on the cathode is usually melted and refined by smelting to cast it into bullion or other forms.
Regeneration: Spent carbon is heated to high temperatures, usually in a kiln or furnace, to remove impurities and restore its adsorption capacity.
Tailings treatment: Tailings contain various chemical substances or minerals, usually stored in tailings ponds or tailings reprocessing for further management and to reduce environmental impact.

CIP Gold Processing plant

1. Feeding + crushing system:

The raw gold ore is sent into the hopper with a trough feeder through the excavator, which can evenly send the material into the jaw crusher to crush the 210mm material to the rock below 60mm. Then, the output of the jaw crusher is transported to the next fine jaw crusher through the belt conveyor, which crushes the 60mm material to less than 20mm. The output material is transported to the vibrating screen through the belt conveyor, and the material larger than 20mm is returned to the fine jaw crusher for further crushing. Finally, the material smaller than 20mm is transported to the hopper with an electromagnetic vibrating feeder and evenly fed into the ball mill.

2. Grinding system:

Ball mills grind fine ore rocks into a fine powder to release the gold in the rocks. Then, the output material enters the spiral classifier for classification. Return the large-grained minerals to the ball mill for re-grinding to ensure that 80% of the final output is less than 200 mesh (0.074mm).

3. Leaching pretreatment :

After grinding and classification, the fine powder enters the slurry tank and is pumped to the thickener by the sand pump. Before the pulp enters the thickener, there is a safety screen to pre-screen to prevent coarse particles, and the pulp under the screen directly enters the inside of the thickener. At the same time, a flocculant needs to be added to accelerate the sedimentation. The overflow water of the thickener enters the sedimentation tank, and the water after sedimentation can be recycled.

4. Leaching

The thickener’s underflow will enter the mixing barrel with the height difference. Then the stirred pulp is driven into the double impeller leaching tank with a sand pump, and sodium cyanide is added.

5. Activated carbon adsorption treatment:

After the gold is leached and dissolved in the solution, the slurry flows into the double-impeller stirring adsorption tank at the back, and activated carbon is placed inside. Activated carbon adsorbs the gold in the pulp to become gold-loaded carbon, which is extracted with a carbon extractor.

6. Desorption and electrolysis of gold-loaded carbon:

A vibrating screen removes the gold-loaded carbon, and the gold-loaded carbon enters the normal temperature and pressure desorption electrolysis system, and gold mud is obtained after electrolysis. The gold mud is then dried in an oven. Finally, use the Gold Furnace to smelt the gold bars.

7. Recycling of gold-loaded carbon

The gold-loaded carbon after desorption is generally dried in a drying oven and reused.

8. Tailings water recovery system:

The tailings of the adsorption stirring tank first enter the vibrating screen to screen the carbon. The material under the screen enters the lower tank/pond, and then is pumped to the large conical pool or tank by the mud pump. Then use the filter pump to send the slurry into the filter press for pressure filtration and recovery of tailings water.

The gold cip plant is high-temperature, high-pressure, cyanide-free, and automatically controlled for desorption. It has the advantages of fast absorption, high recovery rate, and low consumption cost. We support custom complete gold mining equipment and processing plants according to the actual situation of the customer’s mine.