Modeling and simulation of a gold concentrator plant implementing a dissolution loop method

Abstract

Mineral processing applications increasingly use recycled water to preserve freshwater natural resources and comply with environmental regulations. However, accumulating anions, cations, and reagents in the process water may affect plant flotation performance and production continuity. Therefore, many cost actions may be needed to mitigate the recycled water effects. Typically, the process water properties and their effects on flotation performance are unknown for a greenfield project. Often, the result is an over-scaling up of the process plant with an additional financial cost. The experimental methodology in the paper focuses on creating water for testing that is closer to the actual process water during the comminution and flotation process for any greenfield project. The scope of the study consists of creating possible process water, conducting flotation experiments, and simulation. In order to validate the dissolution loop method, refractory gold flotation plant conditions were selected in our Finland laboratory. The simulation results of dissolution loop flotation kinetics were compared with the actual plant mass balance. According to the comparative results, the process water created by the dissolution loop method has the same physical and chemical properties as the actual process water at the site except for SO4 -concentration. Moreover, comparing the simulation results of the experimental data and plant mass balance studies shows that the gold grade and recovery results in the simulation were lower than the actual plant mass balance.