Metal cyanide control in hydrometallurgical processing of gold ores by multivariate calibration procedures

This paper is focused on the development of a spectrophotometric method and the calibration procedure for metal cyanide control through the different steps of the hydrometallurgical processing of gold ores. The spectrophotometric procedure is based on multivariate calibration for the simultaneous determination of different components of the leached solutions (Au(CN)2−, Fe(CN)64−, Cu(CN)43− and Ni(CN)42−) and uses the spectral features of these species in the UV region. The method was applied to the analysis of leached solutions from gold ores and samples from ion exchange adsorption column experiments. The results obtained with the spectrophotometric procedure were in good agreement with those obtained by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy.