A view inside Shandong Zhongkuang Group’s SART (sulfidization, acidification, recycling and thickening) plant in eastern China. Use of the SART technology at the gold plant, according to BQE Water, allows copper and zinc to be recovered simultaneously from the leach solution as separate high-grade concentrates.
BQE Water, a British Columbia, Canada-based provider of mining and metallurgical waste stream management solutions, has advanced the SART (sulphidization, acidification, recycling and thickening) plant it designed for a gold metallurgical facility owned by Shandong Zhongkuang Group to full production. Located in the Shandong Province in eastern China, the plant is operating under the technical supervision of BQE Water.
BQE Water said the SART plant eliminates the need for cyanide destruction, recovers copper and zinc as separate sulphide concentrates, and recycles free cyanide recovered by the plant to gold leaching.
The Zhongkuang SART plant, according to the company, also represents several firsts:
• It is the first application of SART globally where the cyanide competing base metals, copper and zinc, are recovered simultaneously from the leach solution as two separate high-grade concentrates that can be sold to generate incremental revenues.
• It is the first commercial-scale application of SART in China.
• It is the first SART plant where lime is used to control gas emissions to reduce operating costs and control the build-up of salts in the process water.
• It is the first SART plant to be integrated into a complex metallurgical flow-sheet that combines mineral flotation with cyanidation and SART in a Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) metallurgical facility with complete water recycle.
