RIDA GROUP

RGTGP

Utilization and controlling the main processing

Parameters of CIL RIDA

Prepared by:
Ahmed Ibrahim
Almogdad Elhadi
Omer Eltaib Adlan
Wafieldeen Omer

Supervised by:
Table of content:
 1. Introduction
1.1. About
Carbon-in-pulp (CIP) is the sequential leach then absorption of gold from ore.
During the CIP stage, pulp flows through several agitated tanks where sodium
cyanide and oxygen have been added to dissolve gold into solution. In the
absorption stage, this solution flows through several agitated tanks containing
activated carbon. Gold absorbs onto the activated carbon, which flows
countercurrent to the pulp, while screens separate the barren pulp from the gold -
loaded carbon.
Carbon-in leach (CIL) is a simultaneous leach and absorption process. The
simultaneous leach and absorption phases of the CIL process were developed for
processing gold ores that contain preg-robbing materials such as natural absorptive
carbon. These reduce the gold yield by attracting gold meant for the activated
carbon. Simultaneous leaching and absorption help minimize the problem. What's
already been used in Rida Group (Omdurman Mining) is the CIP plant.

CIP plant faces a lot of designing problems due to the first implementation, which
leads to loses in recourses, materials, and man power used to run the plant , Rida
CIP is designed to treat 1500Mt/day, the used ore is tail, which was very profit to
the company in the past years , even without using the optimum parameters,
procedures, and equipment to run the plant , lately the market changed and it can't
be sited as a future plan , which drive the company to start thinking about running
the plant using their own ore , from our mines, which makes it a new challenge.

CIP DIGRAM
 1.2. Operation problems with current CIP plant

In general, we can categorize the production challenges into main three points:

1.2.1. Mass balance data requirements

Mass balance is one of the most important calculations in gold extraction industry.
It represents clearly the total expectation amount of pure gold which will produced,
which is required to figure out are we gain or lose.

About knowing the input of the plant, the current state now is weighting the ore by
the weight-bridge, which is not accurate in several ways. We can use weight feeder
instrument instate.

The cyanide consumption of the plant is only known by counting how many tones
is added in the cyanide tank and then pumped to the columns, it's also not accurate,
which leads to raise the production cost, or even the leaching process may not
happen accurately, leaving some gold that could be extracted if the optimum
amount of cyanide was accomplished accurately. We can use flowmeters before
and after the leaching process simultaneously with cyanide control system.

1.2.2. Production equipment requirements

During our investigation on Rida CIP plant, clearly there was a lot of equipment's
required, we separated it according to capability of being implemented, necessity
and prioritizing thinking economically and coastwise, some of the equipment are
already implemented but needs a re-design, like the bunker, the bunker have a lot
of dead spots, and it capacity in the bare minimum, whenever the ore is not
available to the plant directly, due to mechanical lack in the belt, the bunker
provides ore for only an extra half hour, which makes the bunker working like a
belt convoy.

With all the challenges that is facing the gold industry in Sudan, it became much
harder to cut the roots of the problems, then we decided to work with the problems.
prioritize, and start with the equipment that effects the production specifically, to
get a profitable CIP plant, controlling the parameters effecting the production, ore
input, lime addition, cyanide control, PH control and the oxygen demand by
adding peroxide, these are the parameters that we are focusing on.

1.2.3. Operational quality

The quality of the raw materials affects directly in the production process. These
materials can be the lime, which is used on the PH control. If the lime quality is
bad, it will cause many problems in the PH, so the gold absorption efficiency will
decrease.

The overall production quality can be affected also by the operation procedures
accuracy. For example, in the sampling process which is used now is to take and
test all the samples manually which is affected by the human error. It is better to
use the auto sampling system, it is very simple systems, with low cost.

2. Proposal of utilization CIL RIDA

The improvement of the CIP site can be based on controlling four main parameters
which are:

 Measuring and controlling the feed rate

 PH control system
 Cyanide control system
  Peroxide measuring and optimizing the required quantity

2.1. PH control system

It represents one of the most important operation parameters in gold extraction

industry for three reasons:

 Eng : The most appropriate range of PH to extract the gold effectively is

(10.5 to 11). If the operation PH is out of range, it will cost more cyanide and
the carbon will absorb some impurities which will lead directly to decrease the
recovery of gold. So, we must control the PH within this range.

 Economically: If the PH drops under 7, the hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN)

will form. So, the liquid cyanide which is supposed to be recycled will
escape in gas form and be lost.
 Safety: The produced gas (HCN) is a poisonous gas. It can kill a man in just
5 sec.
 2.1.1. PH controlling process

Figure 2.1: PH control loop system of CIP plant

The control process starts by measuring the PH inside the SUMB vessel which
collects the outlet solution from the ball mills. The measured value is transferred to
the controller device which contains two main departments: comparing the
measured value with the set point in the first department, then sends the difference
to the second department which makes the order to the control valve, which can be
one of three:
 Increase the lime flow if the PH inside the SUMB is lower than the set point.
 Decrease the lime flow if the PH inside the SUMB is higher than the set
point.
 Keep the flow if the two points are equal.

2.1.2. Feasibility study of the PH control system