iCON Hard Rock
Hard Rock miners around the world have historically recovered as little as 30% of their free gold using mercury amalgamation. The iCON process is being used to scavenge/reprocess old tails without using mercury. These miners are now recovering more gold reprocessing tails with iCON than the original miners recovered.
Hard rock miners must first understand some definitions:
• Free Gold is liberated and depending on its size will be visible in a pan.
• Free Milling Gold is the gold that can be liberated by a standard rotating ball mill.
• Refractory Gold is that which is not recoverable by standard milling and/or chemical processes. This may be ‘entrapped in sulfides.’ A standard ball mill may grind your ore to 75 microns. Fine grinding is one process available to liberate refractory gold.
• Gravity Recoverable Gold (GRG) refers to how much gold you can recover based on how fine you are grinding/milling your ore.
The GRG (Gravity Recovery Gold) testing is available at Met-Solve labs (see links).
The number 1 application for iCON worldwide is Hard Rock. The 2tph capacity and the ability to recover fine, flat milled gold are ideal for iCON. The major mines of the world use gravity concentration in their grinding circuits. The concentrators can recover over 90% of the overall production of major/professional mines.
A typical Hard Rock application would involve a crusher and ball mill. The material would be size classified using a cyclone in closed-circuit or simply a screen in semi-closed circuit milling. After the mill the material will pass through the concentrator. The major mine have a ‘recyclic load.’ Their processes are designed for the feed to pass through a concentrator multiple times before passing to the tails.
A Hard Rock operator may choose to run 1.5 tons per hour of a high grade ore. He may choose to rinse the bowl every 10 minutes. Here he would have run 250 kg and collected 1 kg of concentrate. That is a concentration ratio of 250 to 1.
The concentrate will still need to be upgraded or cleaned to have a sellable product. Some miners around the world are choosing to collect the concentrates from multiple mine sites and clean the cons at a regional secure facility. This is known as ‘pre-concentration’.
When scavenging old tails the operator must understand that there is a reason the first miner missed this gold. It may be that it was poorly milled and needs to be re-milled to liberate more gold. In order to recover what another team missed the operator must pay attention to the details and be prepared to adjust their process as required. To understand your or and how much gold you can expect to recover, IGR recommends testing your samples at Mel-Solve labs (see links).
iCON Gold Recovery offers two kinds of Mineral Processing Plants.
Click below for more information on each:
iCON i150 Artisanal Plant - iCON IGR 1000 Plant
Click below to view all of the iCON Gold Recovery Product lines:
Product Overview - iCON Concentrators - iCON Pumps
iCON Screens - iCON Plants - iCON Blue Bowl
