A kinetic study that compares the leaching of gold in the cyanide, thiosulfate, and chloride systems

Due to the increasing environmental and public concerns over cyanidation, there has been a large amount of research into viable alternative lixiviants. This article presents a detailed kinetic study of gold leaching in cyanide, ammonia/thiosulfate, and chloride/hypochlorite solutions. The gold leach rates were measured using a rotating electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (REQCM). This instrument allows the mass of a gold sample to be measured in situ, with a sensitivity of less than 10 ng. It will be shown that for the cyanide system, the leach rate of a gold/silver alloy is substantially higher than that of pure gold; for the gold/silver alloy, the reaction is diffusion controlled. For the thiosulfate system, reaction rates which are substantially higher than those for cyanide can be achieved with freshly prepared solutions containing copper(II), although the leach rate decreases as the copper(II) reacts with thiosulfate. A steady-state copper(II) concentration is obtained once the rate of copper(II) reduction by thiosulfate matches the rate of copper(I) oxidation by oxygen; at these steady-state concentrations of copper(II), the leach rates are slower than those obtained for cyanide. It will also be shown that reaction rates similar to the cyanide system can be readily achieved in chloride media at pH 3 with 2.5 mM hypochlorous acid; under these conditions, the reaction is limited by the diffusion of HClO.