Gold CIL process (carbon in leaching) is very popular way to process the high grade oxide type gold ore
Polymetallic ores are challenging because silver is often locked with lead, zinc, copper, gold, and sulfide minerals. Maximizing recovery means combining good mineral characterization, smart grinding, selective separation, and optimized metallurgy.
Before choosing a process, identify how the silver occurs:
Use:
This tells you whether silver can be recovered by flotation, leaching, gravity, or a combined route.
Silver recovery often improves when silver-bearing minerals are liberated at the right grind size.
Key points:
Overgrinding can hurt flotation and increase reagent consumption.
Flotation is the main method for recovering silver from many polymetallic ores.
Best practices:
If silver is mainly associated with galena, lead flotation may recover most of it. If it reports with copper minerals, a copper concentrate may be the best silver product.
Do not assume silver belongs in only one concentrate.
Often, maximum recovery comes from:
Test each stream for silver grade and recovery. A small amount of silver can be lost in tailings if only one circuit is optimized.
If coarse native silver is present, gravity methods can help:
Gravity is most effective before fine grinding. It can reduce silver losses and improve overall plant economics.
Small reagent changes can strongly affect silver recovery.
Important controls:
Track:
Plant automation and frequent sampling can quickly reveal where silver is being lost.
Very fine silver particles are often lost in tailings or locked in gangue.
Possible solutions:
If silver is encapsulated in sulfides, oxidative treatment may be needed before leaching.
For complex ores, a single method rarely gives the best recovery.
Common flowsheets include:
The best route depends on mineralogy, silver value, and concentrate penalties.
Always test tailings and middlings for hidden silver.
Loss reduction tactics:
Even low-grade tailings may contain economically meaningful silver.
No universal flowsheet works for all polymetallic ores. The highest silver recovery comes from tailoring the process to:
Pilot testing is often the best way to confirm the final design.
To maximize silver recovery from polymetallic ores, focus on mineralogy, liberation, selective flotation, and targeted recovery of all silver-bearing streams. The best results usually come from a combined approach rather than a single process.
A: The right process depends on your ore’s mineralogy, grade, particle size, and liberation characteristics — not on guesswork. The reliable way is to run laboratory and pilot tests first. These tests define whether flotation, gravity separation, magnetic separation, or leaching (or a combination) will deliver the best recovery and grade. We start every project with ore characterization and bench-scale tests, then scale up to pilot validation before committing to plant design — a testing-first approach that avoids costly process mistakes later.
A: Reagent selection depends on the mineral’s surface chemistry and the ore’s gangue composition. Collectors, frothers, depressants, and modifiers are chosen — and their dosages fine-tuned — through laboratory flotation tests on your actual ore sample, not from generic recipes. Over- or under-dosing both hurt recovery. Our metallurgical lab tests reagents on your ore to lock in the right combination and dosage before plant-scale operation, then re-optimizes during commissioning.
A: Heap leaching suits low-grade, high-tonnage ores — crushed ore is stacked and irrigated with a leaching solution, giving low capital and operating cost but slower, weather-dependent recovery. CIL (carbon-in-leach) and CIP (carbon-in-pulp) both use cyanide solution and activated carbon, but differ in where adsorption happens: CIL adds carbon during leaching, which suits clayey or high-fines ores; CIP adds carbon after leaching, which suits clean, free-filtering pulps. The choice comes down to ore type, grade, and throughput — we evaluate all three against your ore to recommend the most economical route.
A: Start by diagnosing where the loss occurs — usually in grinding, classification, or the separation stage itself. Common levers include: optimizing grind size for better liberation, upgrading to more efficient separation equipment (flotation cells, magnetic separators, spirals), automating control for steadier operation, and re-running metallurgical tests when the ore type changes. A structured audit plus targeted equipment or process upgrades typically recovers 2–5% more metal. We provide exactly this — process audits, equipment upgrades, and full EPC retrofits — to lift both recovery and grade.
Gold CIL process (carbon in leaching) is very popular way to process the high grade oxide type gold ore
The best-known of the exogenetic ores is alluvial gold which also called placer gold. Alluvial gold refers
Heap leaching is a traditional cyanide leaching processing way which is flexible and economic to extract gold
Raw Ore: Oxide Type Gold Ore Gold Grade: 3.5 g/t Gold Recovery Rate: 92% Gold Ingot Purity: 96%
Raw Material: Sulfide Flotation Copper Tailings Metal Concentrate: Copper: 0.8%，Gold: 0.3 g/t，Silver: 5 g/t，Iron: 25%
Raw Ore: Stibnite (Antimony Sulfide Ore) Sb Grade: 3.5% Concentrate Grade: 55% Sb
Raw Ore: Mixed Oxide-Sulfide Copper Ore (Chalcocite/Malachite) Copper Grade: 1.2% | Silver: 15g/t
Raw Material: Green Petroleum Coke, Green Needle Coke and High soft point pitch
Raw Ore: Sulfide Copper Ore Copper Grade: 1.2% Target Flotation Recovery Rate: 92%
Raw Ore: Mixed Oxide Type Gold-Copper Ore Gold Grade: 1.5 g/t Copper Grade: 0.8%
Raw Material: Petroleum Coke, Needle Coke, Pitch Binder Project Capacity: 50,000 Tons Per Annum
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