JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – DRDGOLD is excited about the up-flow reactor, which is showing good promise, DRDGOLD CEO Niël Pretorius responded when questioned by Mining Weekly on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company’s modernisation moves.
The use of an up-flow reactor (UFR) to improve recoveries forms part of DRDGOLD’s Far West Gold Recoveries DP 2 plant, the smelt house of which was commissioned on July 14. The balance of the DP2 plant is expected to be commissioned during the current quarter.
An up-flow reactor used to recover gold is described as being a specialised vessel that pumps gold-bearing slurry or chemical solution upward through a vertical chamber to suspend solid particles without mechanical stirring. This counter-current flow system is said to improve gold recovery rates, accelerate reaction kinetics, and cut cyanide consumption by optimising the interaction between gold particles, leaching reagents, and activated carbon.
DRDGOLD did some testwork, liked what it saw, took a recommendation to the board and has been given the go-ahead to build an Aztec up-flow reactor.
“This is frontier stuff for us, so whilst we’re very happy with the pilot work, which was not laboratory-scale testwork but proper pilot plant testwork, this technology has not been tested in real-world conditions and we’ll only know what the contribution of the up-flow reactor will be once we see it.
