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The Stilfontein Gold Mine is located in South Africa and recovers gold and uranium from the same orebody. The latter metal is recovered by solvent extraction process and the final solution is treated with strong base resins in order to recover the gold. However, was very difficult extract the gold from the resins which were stockpiled for many years until find an appropriate process for its treatment [10]. The first trials were done at Minetk where was applied an electro elution technique. The resin stockpile had an average gold content of 900 g/t.
The reagent used was ammonium thiocyanate and the results obtained indicated that was possible recover more than 98% of the gold, but the process had a disadvantage, the elution rate was slow, perhaps there were many metals poisoning or competing during the elution. With so good result was built a big plant where the resins could be treated in batches at the rate of 1 to 2 tonnes of resin with an average recovery of 93%.
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