What reagents does an ADR/carbon plant checklist need to cover?

Four streams: sodium cyanide makeup and dosing on the barren-solution return, lime or caustic soda for pH control (cyanide leaching needs an alkaline solution), acid wash to strip calcium scale off loaded carbon ahead of elution, and antiscalant dosing on the recycle stream to protect piping and columns from scale.

Does this checklist apply to a project that ships carbon to a toll refiner?

The cyanide-makeup and caustic/lime sections apply to any heap-leach carbon-adsorption plant. The acid-wash section applies specifically to a project running on-site elution — a project shipping loaded carbon to a toll refiner does not need that equipment on its own site.

Why does acid wash matter for loaded carbon?

Calcium carbonate and other scale build up on loaded carbon from lime and cyanide-solution contact. An undersized or skipped acid-wash step is a common cause of poor elution efficiency and carbon fouling.

Free checklist / Heap leach ADR & carbon plant

ADR & Carbon Plant Reagent-Handling Checklist

For a heap-leach adsorption–desorption–recovery (ADR) or carbon-adsorption plant: cyanide makeup and dosing, caustic/lime pH control, loaded-carbon acid wash, and antiscalant dosing. Work through it before you spec a dosing pump or size a storage tank, and you'll have the checklist a supplier needs to quote the reagent-handling package in one pass.

✓Cyanide (lixiviant) makeup & dosing: storage form, mix-tank sizing, pump turndown, pH interlock, ventilation and containment
✓Caustic / lime pH control: dosing equipment, continuous monitoring, low-pH alarm interlock with cyanide dosing
✓Loaded-carbon acid wash: vessel sizing, carbon transfer equipment, spent-acid neutralization, off-gas handling
✓Antiscalant dosing: scale-risk assessment, chemistry compatibility, dosing-point placement, monitoring

Built for process and metallurgical engineers, EPC procurement, and mine-site maintenance and reagents leads specifying a heap-leach ADR or carbon-adsorption circuit.

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What's inside, in brief

Cyanide leaching only works, and stays safe, in an alkaline solution — typically held around pH 10.5–11. The checklist starts with the two reagent streams every heap-leach carbon plant runs (cyanide makeup and caustic/lime pH control), then covers the two that come into scope when a project runs on-site elution instead of shipping loaded carbon to a toll refiner (acid wash and antiscalant dosing).

Each section is a real checklist item, not a rule of thumb: storage form and mix-tank sizing for cyanide, pH interlocks between the caustic and cyanide dosing lines, acid-wash vessel sizing and spent-effluent neutralization, and antiscalant chemistry compatibility with a high-pH cyanide solution matrix.

Draft Proposal Worksheet, not a procurement-ready specification. Final reagent selection, dosing rates, materials and safety interlocks are the engineer of record's call and must be confirmed against the project's design documents, MSDS/SDS sheets and each manufacturer's published data.

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James Riggins

LibertyCES — Liberty Chemical Equipment & Supply

One supplier for the cyanide, caustic, acid-wash and antiscalant dosing package, with submittal-ready cut sheets and "or equal" comparisons. No charge to review a spec before it's issued.

(559) 395-5500 ·[email protected] ·[email protected] ·libertyces.com

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