Dynamic simulation of the leaching and adsorption sections of a gold plant
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation describes the development of a dynamic simulator for the leaching and adsorption sections of a gold plant. In contrast to the milling stage which precedes the leaching and which is a purely mechanical process, leaching and adsorption are hydrometallurgical processes which are of particular interest to chemical engineers. Leaching is a well-defined chemical processes in which gold is dissolved out of the rock by reaction with cyanide ions. The leaching process occurs in a series of stirred tank reactors and is easily modelled. The adsorption process is far more challenging to model. The adsorption occurs on carbon particles which are mixed into the pulp and this gives rise to the name carbon-in-pulp (CIP). The actual adsorption of the gold cyanide complex on the lattice structure of the carbon particles is a surface phenomenon which, while it has not been totally defined, can yet be described by conventional rate processes. The adsorption also takes place in a cascade of stirred tank reactors, but the occasional pumping of carbon up the cascade and the resulting counter-current movement of carbon and pulp present modelling challenges. A dynamic simulator was regarded necessary for this process to determine what the short and long term effects of process disturbances are. While steady state models have been developed before, they are not able to describe the transient responses to such changes. Disturbances are all too common on an operating plant and as a result the plant never truly reaches a steady-state. Any control strategy for the plant must necessarily be developed by taking the transient responses into consideration. Another requirement was for the simulator to be flexible enough to be adapted quickly to various plants. It was also to be able to read in any applicable and easily available information from plant data files and to use the data to recreate reasonably accurate outputs. The simulator is written as a collection of ordinary differen…
abstract: This dissertation describes the development of a dynamic simulator for the leaching and adsorption sections of a gold plant. In contrast to the milling stage which precedes the leaching and which is a purely mechanical process, leaching and adsorption are hydrometallurgical processes which are of particular interest to chemical engineers. Leaching is a well-defined chemical processes in which gold is dissolved out of the rock by reaction with cyanide ions. The leaching process occurs in a series of stirred tank reactors and is easily modelled. The adsorption process is far more challenging to model. The adsorption occurs on carbon particles which are mixed into the pulp and this gives rise to the name carbon-in-pulp (CIP). The actual adsorption of the gold cyanide complex on the lattice structure of the carbon particles is a surface phenomenon which, while it has not been totally defined, can yet be described by conventional rate processes. The adsorption also takes place in a cascade of stirred tank reactors, but the occasional pumping of carbon up the cascade and the resulting counter-current movement of carbon and pulp present modelling challenges. A dynamic simulator was regarded necessary for this process to determine what the short and long term effects of process disturbances are. While steady state models have been developed before, they are not able to describe the transient responses to such changes. Disturbances are all too common on an operating plant and as a result the plant never truly reaches a steady-state. Any control strategy for the plant must necessarily be developed by taking the transient responses into consideration. Another requirement was for the simulator to be flexible enough to be adapted quickly to various plants. It was also to be able to read in any applicable and easily available information from plant data files and to use the data to recreate reasonably accurate outputs. The simulator is written as a collection of ordinary differen…
author: Schubert, Joachim Hans
language: eng
date published: 1992
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:46Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Department of Chemical Engineering

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21989