abstract

• For several decades, attempts have been made to replace cyanide with the reagent thiourea (TU) to reduce the impact on the environment; however, cyanide continues to be the reagent most used industrially, and this is partly due to the higher consumption of TU during leaching. Nevertheless, the use of thiourea could be justified for the leaching of gold and silver from high-grade ores. In this work, a mineral concentrate of gold and silver was characterized by XRD as well as the leaching solutions in their concentration of gold, and silver, by means of atomic absorption spectrometry. The results of leaching in a system only with TU with 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 M show a higher percentage of Au and Ag leaching at a lower concentration of TU (0.2 M). In just 15 min of leaching, 88 and 59%25 of gold and silver dissolution are obtained, respectively.

authors

• Barrientos-Hernández F.R.
• Flores-Guerrero M.U.
• Juárez-Tapia J.C.
• Reyes Domínguez Iván Alejandro
• Reyes-Pérez M.

publication date

• 2023-01-01

published in

• Characterization of Minerals, Metals, and Materials 2023   Book

keywords

• Thiourea, Gold, Silver, Leaching, Activation

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1007/978-3-031-22576-5_30

PubMed ID

start page

• 311

end page

• 318

volume

issue