Preliminary tests for recovering by bottled cyanidation from combined lateritic and clayey ores samples of the gold-bearing province of Yaouré in central Côte d'Ivoire (West Africa)

The Yaoure gold deposit (Central Ivory Coast, West Africa) is composed of several types of ores: quartz vein, sulphide facies (45-50 m in depth), oxidized facies (35-45 m in depth) and, on the surface, a clayey zone. Therefore some physical features like permeability are essential in the heap leaching method. Taken separately, the ore associated with the clay show some recovery problems, when the humidity level is more than 12 to 15%. For this cause, the Department of science and mining resources of INP-HB has study the blending method thus to face that problem. It's consisting of mixing the clayey ore with different other types of ore proportionally to obtain a heterogeneous ore and increase its permeability thus. A leaching test has been achieved on six samples (blended clayey and lateritic ores) to determine the maximum recovery and the optimum consumption in reagents (NaCN and CaO). The tests results permit to obtain the best figure with 96.63% of reconstituted quantity recovery with reagents consumption of 1.41 kg/t in NaCN and 0.45 kg/t in CaO. In addition, some in column leaching tests must be done often to simulate the leaching in heap with the aim of determining some technical, physical and economic parameters to improve the process and therefore to increase the recovery.