Ion exchange resins can potentially be applied in cyanide recycling to address growing environmental concerns over the use of cyanide during gold extraction. In the present work the elution of copper-, iron-, and zinc-cyanocomplexes from polyacrylic- and polystyrene-based resins was studied. It was found that iron and copper cyanides are easily eluted from polyacrylic- and polystyrene-based ion exchange resins using either SCN- or NO3-. However, elution of the zinc cyanide complex from polystyrene-based resins was poor when using nitrate solution as eluant. Besides, an increase in elution temperature from 25 °C to 50 °C improved the elution of iron and zinc cyanides from polystyrene-based resins using a nitrate eluant; however temperature did not have any significant effect on other metal cyanocomplexes or for elution using thiocyanate. It was therefore proposed that the optimal combination of resin-eluant was site-specific, and depends on the features of the effluent, processing temperature, eluant concentration, and ion exchange resin under consideration.
Cyanide recycling; Ion exchange resins; Thiocyanate; Nitrate; Gold extraction; Elution
