Vitrokele technology is a resin process that can be applied in gold plants
to reduce both capital and operating costs. The Vitrokele resin can be
used for both precious metal recovery and for recovering free and
combined cyanide from effluent streams. Vitrokele resin has been extensively tested at pilot plant level and is
now applied successfully at a commercial heap leach facility in
Zimbabwe where it is used in place of activated carbon for recovery of
gold from pregnant leach solution. Significant capital cost savings were
achieved by installation of a resin plant instead of a conventional carbon
adsorption plant. Operation to-date has not seen any significant physical
or chemical degradation of the resin either in terms of adsorption
capacity/kinetics or physical appearance/size. This gold recovery process is equally applicable to slurry streams
where it would be implemented in stirred tanks with interstage screens in
a similar manner to a conventional carbon adsorption plant.