Development of Gold Extraction Method from Low Grade Gold Ore

• Main Author: MUHAMMAD RUSLI (NIM 10505062), ANDI
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/11799
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Gold extracted generally with dangerous techniques and have negative impact to the environment such as solvent extraction by cyanidation or amalgamation with mercury. Several saparation techniques that mostly applied are preconsentration technique with mercury, ion exchange, solvent extraction, and cyanidation. More efficient extraction techniques are needed to anticipate the scarcercity of high grade gold ore. In this research, gold extraction successfully extracted with Solvent Impregnated resin (SIR) that previously preconsentrated by floating technique using organic liquid that have heavy specific gravity such as bromoform. As we know that specific gravity of gold is heavier than bromoform, while silicate is a little lighter than bromoform. In this research we also studied SIR extraction method using trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) as extractant and XAD-4 as support. The existence of phosphine oxide that have a free electron pairs makes TOPO as ligan that is capable to hold gold ion from solution which pass through SIR column stronger than other metal ion. Gold measurement is conducted by using Atomic Absorbtion Spectometry. The low grade gold ore are successfully preconcetrated from silicate matrix as much as 40.67 times by floating method with bromofom. SIR capacities to absorb gold up to 409.65 ug/gram resin with optimum pH is 0. Gold successfully recover with thiourea as much as 64.83%.