m.r. khalesi

The presence of copper oxide next to gold increases the consumption of cyanide in the cyanidation process, reduces the absorption of gold on carbon, and causes many problems in the downstream processes of elution, electrowinning, and smelting. In the current research, increasing the recovery of gold dissolution and its selective adsorption on activated carbon using ammonia additive and the effect of different factors such as the type of ammonia additive, changing the system of contact of gold with carbon from CIL to CIC, and adding hydrogen peroxide and cyanide to the filtered solution were studied. The findings showed that adding ammonium chloride or liquid ammonia to the cyanidation solution, in the sample with high copper grade (1% copper), and in the sample with medium copper grade (0.5% copper), increased the dissolution recovery by 60% and 30%, respectively. Also, the recovery of gold adsorption on activated carbon in sample with a grade of 0.5% copper increased from about 25% during the normal CIL process to about 100% during the ammonia cyanidation process in the form of CIC. Results showed that liquid ammonia provides up to 10% higher dissolution recovery and up to 3% higher absorption recovery compared to ammonium chloride, while reduces the consumption of cyanide by half and the amount of copper absorption on carbon by a third.

The adsorption of gold and copper cyanide complexes on the activated carbon is investigated using the Density Functional Theory (DFT). In order to represent the activated carbon, two fullerene-like model (presenting structural defect sites) and a simple graphene layer containing different functional groups (presenting chemical active sites) are employed. The structural defect sites show a much lower adsorption tendency toward all the cyano complexes comparing to the chemical active sites. The interaction energy for all of the complexes with structural defect sites (concave) is very low. However, the graphene layer with unsaturated active sites displays the highest level of interaction almost for all the complexes except Cu(CN)4-3. The effect of oxygen functional groups on the graphite edges shows a crucial role in the selectivity of gold adsorption over copper complexes. It has increased adsorption energy for Cu(CN)2- in the presence of OH and COOH, and has decreased adsorption energy for Au(CN)2- by OH and increased by COOH. The study results elucidate the lower selectivity for adsorption of gold over copper cyanides by high oxygen content activated carbon. The energy levels of the HOMO and LUMO orbitals show adsorption of unpaired cyanide anions on the activated carbon surface occurs by electron transfer from the complex to the adsorbent and adsorption onto the activated carbon edges by transferring electrons from the absorbent to the complex. The result has clearly demonstrated that the functional groups increase the adsorption tendency for both the gold (only COOH) and copper complexes (OH and COOH) but deteriorate the selectivity of gold over copper cyanides.

While many studies have confirmed the effect of particle size distribution on the residence time in a reactor, the most employed models of continuous tank leaching process consider the residence time and particle size distributions as independent variables. In minerals processing field, no systematic study has been conducted on this issue yet. In this research, the relationship between the particles size and their residence time in a mixing tank has been studied. An empirical method for the determination of the residence time distribution function based on the inflow particles size distribution has been proposed. The relationship between the average size of one size fraction of particles and its residence time was obtained by mean residence time and parameter  (an empirical coefficient). Results showed that increasing the particle sizes resulted in a 50% increase in the mean residence time while  decreased from 0.95 to 0.3. Using the evaluated values of  the residence time distribution function of the inflow stream was determined. Including this function in the segregated flow model, the effect of the variations of the  value on the leaching performance was evaluated. Results showed that smaller values of  resulted in higher conversion value.

The fluorescent powder contributes to up to 3% weight of compact fluorescent lamps, a significant portion of which contains rare earth elements such as yttrium and europium. These lamps are not recycled after usage, while they can be a good source for these elements. In this study, investigation on the process of dissolution and precipitation of yttrium and europium by hydrochloric acid and oxalic acid was targeted in order to find the optimal operating conditions. By measuring the pH changes, factors such as temperature, time, acid concentration, and solid-to-liquid ratio were determined to achieve the best leaching conditions. In addition, in the precipitation stage, the rinsing effect of yttrium hydroxide gels on increasing the purity of the product was investigated. The best leaching conditions were obtained by hydrochloric acid at 75 0C for at least 30 minutes and a solid-to-liquid ratio of 15 g/l in 0.3 M acid solution. The maximum precipitation of yttrium and europium oxalate, was obtained at pH=7. Rinsing the hydroxide gel by distilled water increased the purity of the product by more than 97% for the total of yttrium and europium, while 97% of europium and 99% of yttrium were recovered in the product.

Copper oxide minerals such as malachite do not respond well to the traditional copper sulfide collectors, and require alternative flotation schemes. In many copper ore mines, significant copper oxide minerals, especially malachite, are associated with sulfide minerals. Considering that xanthates are most widely used in the flotation of sulfide minerals as well as copper sulfide minerals and, hydroxamate has shown a good selectivity for copper oxide minerals. Use of the synergistic effect of xanthate and hydroxamate can be an effective way to increase the flotation efficiency of copper oxide minerals along with sulfide minerals. In this work, we investigate the individual interactions of potassium amyl xanthate (PAX) and potassium alkyl hydroxamate (HXM) with the natural malachite and explore their synergistic effects on the malachite flotation. The results of solubility of malachite in collector solutions, changes in the malachite surface potential, adsorption kinetics, adsorption densities, dynamic contact angles, FT-IR analyses, and small-scale flotations, are discussed. The results obtained demonstrate that PAX and HXM are chemically co-adsorbed on the malachite surface, and the amount of PAX adsorbed on the malachite surface is considerably increased in the mixed PAX/HXM systems because of the co-adsorption mechanism. The flotation results confirm that the mixed PAX/HXM exhibit a superior flotation performance of malachite compared to the individual system of PAX or HXM. Based on these results, the mixed PAX/HXM exhibit a remarkable synergism effect on malachite surface hydrophobicity