Recovery of Residual Copper and Gold in White Dam Gold Operations
Background
The White Dam Gold Operation is in South Australia. With Core’s assistance, GBM Resources is currently earning a 50% JV interest in project cashflows from existing owner Round Oak Minerals.
Mining has completed at site, and residual metals are being heap leached. High copper tenors are affecting gold leaching, and cyanide costs are extremely high.
Core scope
A low capital SART (sulphidisation, acidification, recycling, and thickening) plant designed by Core has been used to strip out and recover the copper and gold from process liquors, reduce cyanide consumption and enable improved site rehabilitation.
- Reduction in extremely high cyanide additions to improve residual gold recovery
- Removal of cyanide and copper from process liquors thus enabling a quicker and more effective shut-down.
- More complete extraction of residual gold and copper in the heaps
- Potentially also extracting additional copper and gold resources from other regional sources
Core initially identified the opportunity while working for Round Oak, and Core later introduced GBM Resources as a JV partner and project financier.
Civil works were completed in early 2020 and the SART plant construction was completed broadly as planned, with only small COVID-19 related delays to the delivery times of some key equipment. Staged commissioning activities commenced in July 2020 as circuits in the plant were progressively completed. The circuit has now been continuously operated, with reagent additions and first copper sulphide concentrate having been produced. The gold leaching and SART plant reached steady-state operations in October 2020.
