Minerals Engineering 18 (2005) 845848

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A CIP simulation technique using excel built-in functionality

J.W. Coetzee *, S. Lalloo
Department of Chemical Engineering, Cape Technikon, P.O. Box 652, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

Received 9 December 2004; accepted 19 January 2005

Available online 24 May 2005

Abstract

Carbon-in-pulp (CIP) operations are used extensively in the gold mining sector to recover aurocyanide form solution. In this
study, an attempt was made to model these operations by making use of various simplifying assumptions in order to simulate
the eect of changing operating conditions on plant performance. A pragmatic approach was followed as the developed simulation
is aimed at industrial scale applications. The model is based on the assumptions that leaching and adsorption rates are a function of
the dierence in concentration between metallic gold and aurocyanide, and aurocyanide and gold adsorbed onto the activated car-
bon respectively. This type of model proved to be eective for plant data simulation purposes and could be solved using a Newto-
nian search algorithm where the errors between predicted outputs and plant data is minimized.

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Modelling; Simulation; Gold ores

1. Introduction manage cyanide levels in the wake of even more stringent

Major advances in the practical application of CIP
technology have been made over the last few decades
resulting in this technology being rmly entrenched in
the gold mining sector. However, CIP dynamics are
not always well understood by plant operators and engi-
neers. Furthermore, the intensity and amount of re-
search on the understanding and eective operation of
CIP plants tend to follow the gold price. During the
1980s when the gold price was relatively high, numerous
gold research projects were conducted. Less interest in
new projects were shown since the 1990s as the gold
price reached new low levels. However, it is even more
important to launch projects during these dicult times
to ensure optimal plant performance. There is inevitably
means to improve on recovery rates and/or reduce oper-
ating costs provided the CIP plant can be simulated accu-
rately. Moreover, it has become extremely important to
pollution control legislation worldwide. This can for
example be achieved by an accurate simulation balancing
the eect that a decrease in cyanide addition may have on
the rate of gold dissolution in the leaching section and
making use of the shifting equilibrium phenomenon in
the CIP section to counter the decrease in leaching sec-
tion eciency.
This study attempts to develop a simplied model
that can be used to predict CIP plant performance under
varying operational conditions, thereby assisting plant
metallurgist to achieve optimum eciency and to high-
light plant sensitivity to certain variables. The model
was kept as simple as possible by assuming a linear equi-
librium and kinetic operation. This resulted in only eight
parameters that must be solved for.
2. Leaching model

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +27 21 460 3159; fax: +27 21 460 3282. Elsners equation can be used to show how metallic
E-mail address: coetzeew@cput.ac.za (J.W. Coetzee). gold is leached by cyanide

0892-6875/$ - see front matter
2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2005.01.022
846 J.W. Coetzee, S. Lalloo / Minerals Engineering 18 (2005) 845848
Nomenclature
k rate constant (h1)
K equilibrium constant
M mass ow rate (t h1)
q carbon loading (g t1)

4Au 8CN O2 2H2 O () 4AuCN2 4OH
1 ing iron, copper, nickel and silver, which will consume
The amounts of solid gold, dissolved cyanide and oxy-
gen all play a part in reaction kinetics and equilibrium.
Also, it has been reported by Kudryk and Kellogg
(1954) that rate control could be linked to cyanide or
oxygen levels, which is dependant on the ratio of these
two species.
Various gold leaching models has been proposed in
the past by Schubert et al. (1993) and Habashi (1966).
Most of these are relatively complex to solve and re-
quires a number of unknowns to be determined or esti-
mated. These include exposed gold surface area,
diusivities, boundary layer dimensions, occlusion fac-
tors and the radius of gold particles. As a result of this,
a semi-empirical leaching model was used but with fewer
parameters needed to obtain dissolution rates.
Generally, air is released constantly at the bottom of
each leaching vessel during gold dissolution and in many
cases pure oxygen is injected. Thus, it was assumed that
the ratio of oxygen to cyanide is suciently large to
avoid the possibility that leaching kinetics is under oxy-
gen concentration control. A further practical reason for
this assumption is that most gold plants do not measure
oxygen levels and it would be meaningless to add such a
term to the modelling procedure.
Elsners dissolution reaction is reversible and equilib-
rium of the reaction is thus also inuenced by the
amounts of solid gold and gold cyanide present. Hence,
Equilibrium

f fAu; AuCN2 ; CN g; assuming excess O2 2 of M.
Assuming a linear isotherm

AuCN2 
K L Au  3 4. Simulation
CN 
The above implies that an increase (decrease) in gold or
cyanide concentration will increase (decrease) the dis-
tance from equilibrium. Also an increase (decrease) in
aurocyanide concentration will decrease (increase) the
distance from equilibrium.
If it is assumed that the rate of the reaction is a linear
function of the distance from equilibrium then:
 
DAuCN 2 AuCN 2
k L K L Au  4 preg-robbing
Dt CN  carbon transfer rates
Subscripts
A adsorption
i stage
L leaching
Many other metallic species are also present, includ-
cyanide and oxygen. However, including all possible
species in the modelling procedure will be impractical
and it was decided to lump these as a single metal M
of valency +3
2M 6CN O2 H2 O () M2 CN2
6 OH

5
A similar lumping of metallic species in CIP/CIL opera-
tions has been proposed in the past (Shubert et al.).
Thus, two equilibrium constants and two kinetic param-
eters must be solved in order to predict leaching kinetics
of both gold and other metals.
3. Adsorption model
Van Deventer and Ross (1991) concluded that empir-
ical methods for gold adsorption onto activated carbon
are conceptually simple but limited in their applicability.
However, fundamental sorption models such as that
proposed by Van Deventer (1984) are computationally
complex although more generally based (Bailey, 1987).
The sorption modelling procedure followed in this
study is that proposed by Nicol et al. (1984) and was se-
lected based on its simplicity, rather than fundamental
base.
DAuCN
2 
k A K A AuCN2   q 6
Dt
Again, four parameters must be solved in order to
predict sorption rates, including that of the adsorption
The basic operation of a CIP plant seems at rst
glance to be relatively simplistic. However, literature re-
veals that there are numerous variables that could aect
the process. These include:
pH
fouling of carbon
pore structure of carbon
 J.W. Coetzee, S. Lalloo / Minerals Engineering 18 (2005) 845848 847

competitive adsorption
carbon breakage mechanisms
equilibrium conditions
carbon activity
Many attempts have been made in the past to simu-
late or model CIP operations (Schubert et al., 1993;
Stange, 1991; Stange et al., 1990), which utilized various
techniques to incorporate some of the complex factors
listed above. A trade-o appears to be present between
increasing the accuracy of the model by increasing the
number of parameters to solve for vs. increased com-
plexity of the model/simulation. For this reason this sim-
ulation makes use of the following simplifying
assumptions:
No adverse pH changes are present.
Adsorption and leaching kinetics are explained by a
linear rate equation (as explained previously).
The eect of fouling on mass transfer kinetics and
equilibrium is constant.
Carbon breakage can be expressed as a xed percent-
age of the amount of carbon transferred with carbon
nes gold loading equal to the loading of carbon in
the nal stage.
Carbon transfer occurs continuously.
No carbon loading prole per stage.
Perfect mixing.
The eect of back-mixing is negligible.
Carbon activity remains constant.
The plant model is built by the input of appropriate
plant data in an Excel spreadsheet. This includes:
Pulp and carbon ow rates.
Leaching and CIP stage volumes.
Solution concentration and carbon loading in each
stage.
Solid gold proles.
Dissolution data from leaching section (for both gold
and M).
Cyanide addition to leaching section.
Free cyanide and metal cyanide complexes in euent.
An error term is developed where the percentage
error between actual plant data and estimated outputs
is calculated and minimized using Excels Solver capabil-
ities employing a Newtonian search. Leaching data is
analysed rst to obtain the values of kL and KL for gold
and other metal species.
Each stage of the CIP plant is constrained in order to
ensure the conservation of mass, that is, metal species
mass into and out of each stage is equal (steady state
is assumed). This procedure is followed to determine
the constants kA and KA by employing the leaching
and adsorption models as follows:
 
AuCN2 i1  AuCN2 i
M H2 O
Dt
M H2 O k A K A AuCN 2  i  qi
  
AuCN2 i
M Solids k L K L Aui  7
CN i
A similar procedure is followed to determine the
change in concentration of M after which the cyanide
balance is completed.
A plant simulation utilizes these mass transfer and
equilibrium parameters in order to predict the eect of
changes in operating conditions to plant performance.
When attempting a CIP simulation, various cross-ref-
erencing terms are generated. The most obvious being
the calculation of the gold loading on the carbon fed to
the nal stage from the elution section. This value is a
function of elution eciency and is calculated from
the carbon loading in the rst CIP stage. However, the
loading in the rst stage is also a function of the loading
fed to the system from an overall mass balance. Many
situations such as the above are created in a CIP simu-
lation, and it is required to estimate certain values and
to minimize the error between the actual calculated
value and that estimated. A continuous estimation of
values in each stage occurs and the values then calcu-
lated from the rate expression and the error generated
minimized by Excel Solvers Newtonian search method.
Values that have to be estimated include AuCN 2 out ,
Auout, [CN]out, [M]out and [solid M]out from each stage.
This occurs in conjunction with an overall mass balance
over the CIP plant.
From the above it is clear that the focus of this project
is strongly on the realistic solving of mass balancing
functions in a CIP circuit based on simplied rate expres-
sions rather than using complex functions at the risk of
not obtaining a realistic mass simulation.
5. A modelling case study
The developed model was tested against actual data
obtained from a South African gold plant with a sum-
mary of the results obtained shown in Table 1.
The rate and equilibrium constants calculated for Au
are:
kA 0.00032 h1
KA 16 669
kL 4.8 h1
KL 0.07
And for M
kA 0.00003 h1
KA 12 000
kL 1.0
KL 0.82
848 J.W. Coetzee, S. Lalloo / Minerals Engineering 18 (2005) 845848

Table 1
Summary of modelled results of a full-scale CIP plant with a solid feed rate of 300 t/h and carbon ow of 0.6 t/h
Stage AuCN
2  actual, AuCN
2  model, q actual, q model, [Au] actual, [Au] model, [CN] actual, [CN] model,
ppm ppm g/t g/t g/t g/t ppm ppm
Feed 5.30 5.30 150 155 1.2 49
1 1.12 1.04 3500 3475 0.98 48
2 0.35 0.25 1300 1214 0.82 48
3 0.06 0.09 500 687 0.63 44
4 0.02 0.04 400 494 0.45 43
5 0.01 0.02 300 292 0.18 42
6 0.009 0.01 200 159 0.01 41
7 0.008 0.01 150 155 0.01 39
8 0.008 0.01 150 155 0.01 0.01 50 39

Table 2 using simple semi-empirical rate expressions. It is not

Simulated result with the ore ow rate 360 t/h and carbon rate 0.7 t/h suggested that complicating factors such as back-mixing
Stage AuCN
2 , ppm [Au], g/t q, g/t [CN], ppm and intermittent carbon transfer does not play a role,
Feed 5.1 1.41 100 49 but that the focus of a CIP simulation should be on solv-
1 1.26 1.41 3512 35 ing mass balance relationships as accurately as possible.
2 0.35 0.54 1488 32 Finally, it was shown that the optimisation algorithm
3 0.1 0.14 557 28
4 0.04 0.09 219 28
built into Excel (solver) is a very powerful tool in solving
5 0.02 0.09 156 28 process parameters and conducting simulations. How-
6 0.01 0.09 148 28 ever, the problem must be set with realistic constraints
7 0.01 0.08 146 28 and error functions to avoid unrealistic outputs.
8 0.01 0.01 145 27

References

Bailey, P.R., 1987. Application of activated carbon on gold recovery.

From the above it is clear that the model provides accu-
rate estimates of average plant data.
Once a realistic model, that is a reasonable correla-
tion to plant data has been found, certain operating con-
ditions may be varied in order to test the impact on
plant operations. A typical example would be an in-
crease in feed rate to the CIP plant. One option to coun-
ter the eect of this increase would be to increase the
carbon ow through the circuit provided the elution sec-
tion has sucient capacity. Also, an increase in cyanide
addition may be required to leach additional gold feed.
In this simulation a 20% increase in feed rate is counter-
acted by an increase in carbon ow rate together with a
10% increase in cyanide addition to the leaching section
(Table 2).
6. Conclusion
This study suggests that realistic CIP simulations can
be achieved using various simplifying assumptions and
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