Ion exchange resins can be applied in cyanide recycling to address growing environmental concerns about the use of cyanide during gold extraction. Although sorption with resins can be easily accomplished, elution is the key step and presents some problems. This work aims to study both loading and elution of two resins with different matrixes, Purolite A500® and Bayer AP247®, loaded with copper- and gold cyanocomplexes. Both resins were loaded at 25ºC (batchwise) and column elutions were performed at 50°C with either 1mol/L NaNO3 or NaSCN solutions. It has been found that 1mol/L nitrate solutions could not elute gold from polysterene resins(Purolite A500®). Conversely, both cyanocomplexes were removed from the Bayer AP247® resin. For both resins, NaSCN (1mol/L) solutions increased metals yield as well as elution rates of both complexes.
copper; gold; elution; ion exchange resin; cyanocomplexes
