Method of precious metal recovery

Abstract

The proposed methods of precious metal recovery and may be applied to the recovery of precious metals from various types of mineral raw source materials containing organic compounds of precious metals and chlorides of alkali and earth metals, e.g. collective concentrate produced from clay-salt residue of potassium production, or marker clays, etc. This method includes chlorinating roasting of the collective concentrate produced during enrichment of the material with residual chlorides, or natural concentrate with up to 15% chlorides content. Thereafter, the cinder is leached by an aqua-regia solution, the precious metals are recovered from the pulp via of sorption, chlorinating roasting is held at 600-700° C., the precious metals are leached from the cinder using diluted solution of aqua-regia, and then via sorption. The process is cost-efficient due to the use of chlorinating agent, reduction of the process steps number, decreasing of the roasting temperature, and the leaching by diluted acid.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part application of a U.S. national phase application filed on 7 Jul. 2008 Nr. 12 / 087,446 of a PCT application PCT / RU2007 / 000004 filed on 9 Jan. 2007, published as WO2007 / 081243, whose disclosure is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, which PCT application claims priority of a Russian Federation patent application RU2006 / 100779 filed on 10 Jan. 2006. At the same time, this continuation-in-part application contains newly explained features indicating that ‘the mineral raw materials’ also contain ‘organic compounds of precious metals’ and the meaning of ‘marker clays’. The continuation-in-part application therefore does not claim priority of RU2006 / 100779 and PCT / RU2007 / 000004 with respect to these newly explained features.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to methods for precious metal recovery and may be applied to recover precious metals (e.g. platinum, palladium, gold, ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]Availability of the above features of the inventive method ensures a complex recovery of gold, silver and platinum metals from the mineral raw materials such as clay-salt residues (slimes) of the potassium production, containing chlorides of alkali and earth metals. Cost-efficiency of the process is improved due to the use of a chlorinating agent contained therein, reduction of the number of process steps (avoiding the fusion-mixing with the chlorinating agent), decreasing the firing temperature compared to that of the prototype, and leaching the precious metals from the cinder by using diluted acid.

Problems solved by technology

The disadvantages of the above method include the need to thoroughly clean the chlorides and use elemental chlorine, a high toxic substance, for gold recovery.

The disadvantages of the above method are as follows:1) High power inputs due to conducting of the roasting process at 1000-1150° C.2) The process of sublimation of gold and silver chlorides at oxidizing conditions does not affect platinoids, and they (platinoids) continue to remain in the cinder.3) Catching of gold and silver sublimates is complicated and inefficient due to low content of gold and silver in the gaseous phase.

The disadvantages of the above method include insufficient precious metal recovery ratio and high power input in the process.