How to Extract Gold with Microbial Heap Leaching?

Now, heap leaching is a popular way to separate gold from ore. Gravity, flotation, amalgamation, cyaniding, resin in pulp, carbon plasma adsorption and dump leaching are commonly used in gold processing. When gold ore is covered by sulfide ore, it is hard for cyanide to react with gold ore within. Microbe could be used to dissolve sulfide cover for the following heap leaching stage. We will introduce microbe mining processing method in this article.

Moderate thermophile and thermophilic bacteria are the most commonly used microbes in leaching, such as Sulfur thermophilic bacillus, thermal oxide vulcanization coli, sulphur bacteria and thiobacillus ferrous oxide. These microbes obtain energy they need in metabolic process according to oxide sulfide ore. There are three types microbe leaching: contact leaching mechanism, indirect leaching mechanism and collaboration leaching mechanism.

Contact leaching mechanism: bacteria secrete EPS to absorb on the ore surface. In the adsorbed layer, bacteria oxide Fe²⁺ which are produced in the sulfide oxidation into Fe³⁺ and change low valence S into ferric iron. Fe³⁺ and H⁺  oxide sulfide continuously, and sulfide oxide the baluable gold while the iron are oxide by bacteria into ferric iron.

Indirect leaching mechanism: free bacteria suspend in leaching liquid is ferric iron which react with ore surface to expose the gold within. Collaboration leaching: there are both bacteria contact leaching mechanism and indirect contact leaching mechanism. These three mechanisms are widely accepted by most of scholars.

Microbial heap leaching process is: raw material---crushing---spray leaching---sodium sulfide precipitating silver---active carbon adsorbing gold---disabsorpting gold bearing carbon---pregnant solution---drying gold mud---gold fine casting gold. XINHAI is opened up focusing on gold mining, who has decades years of experiences in gold mining. Welcome your consultant and inquiry.