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Mining Engineering Glossary.

Plain-language definitions of the terms KCA engineers use every day — from heap leaching to NI 43-101.
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AARL Strip ADR Plant Agglomeration Bottle Roll Test Carbon Adsorption Carbon Regeneration CIP vs CIL Column Leach Test Cyanidation Cyanide Destruction Doré Bar Electrowinning EPCM EPCM vs EPC Froth Flotation Gravity Concentration Head Grade Heap Leaching HPGR Lixiviant Mercury Retort Merrill-Crowe Process Modular vs Site-Built NI 43-101 Pad Design PEA vs PFS vs FS PLS (Pregnant Leach Solution) Recovery Rate Tailings Zadra Strip

Chemistry

Lixiviant
A lixiviant is a chemical solution used to dissolve a target metal from ore. In gold mining the dominant lixiviant is dilute sodiu...

Engineering Studies

PEA vs PFS vs FS
These are three escalating levels of mining-project engineering studies. PEA (Preliminary Economic Assessment) is scoping-level at...

Engineering · Geotechnical

Pad Design
A heap leach pad is the engineered foundation on which crushed ore is stacked for cyanide leaching. It consists of an impermeable ...

Environment · Disposal

Tailings
Tailings are the finely-ground rock residues left after the target metal has been extracted. Tailings management is the engineerin...

Environment · Tailings

Cyanide Destruction
Cyanide destruction is the process of breaking down residual cyanide in mill tailings before disposal, lowering CN concentrations ...

Equipment · Carbon Circuit

Carbon Regeneration
Carbon regeneration is the thermal treatment of activated carbon to restore its gold-loading capacity after extended use. Carbon i...

Equipment · Comminution

HPGR
HPGR (High-Pressure Grinding Roll) is a comminution technology that crushes ore between two counter-rotating rolls under very high...

Equipment · Gold Recovery

ADR Plant
ADR stands for Adsorption / Desorption / Recovery — the three-stage carbon-adsorption circuit used to extract gold from pregnant...

Equipment · Hg Recovery

Mercury Retort
A mercury retort is a sealed heated vessel used to safely separate mercury from gold/silver concentrate before smelting. The conce...

Laboratory · Cyanidation

Bottle Roll Test
A bottle roll test is the standard first-stage laboratory test for gold and silver cyanidation. A ground ore sample (typically 1�...

Laboratory · Heap Leach

Column Leach Test
A column leach test is a laboratory simulation of heap-leach operation. Crushed ore is loaded into a vertical column (0.3–3 m di...

Metrics

Recovery Rate
Recovery rate (or recovery percentage) is the proportion of contained metal that actually ends up in saleable form after processin...
Head Grade
Head grade is the concentration of target metal in the ore feed to a processing plant, typically expressed as grams per tonne (g/t...

Plant Delivery

Modular vs Site-Built
Modular plants are fully fabricated and wet-tested off-site, then shipped in containers and reassembled on the mine site in weeks....

Process Stream

PLS (Pregnant Leach Solution)
Pregnant leach solution (PLS) is the cyanide solution that has percolated through a heap or agitated leach circuit and is now "pre...

Process · Carbon Desorption

Zadra Strip
Zadra strip is the most common method for eluting (desorbing) gold from loaded activated carbon in an ADR plant. Loaded carbon is ...
AARL Strip
AARL (Anglo American Research Laboratories) strip is a pressurized variant of carbon desorption used in ADR plants. Loaded carbon ...

Process · Chemistry

Cyanidation
Cyanidation is the dissolution of gold (and silver) by an alkaline cyanide solution. The reaction — known as the Elsner equation...

Process · Concentration

Froth Flotation
Froth flotation is a mineral-concentration process that separates sulfide minerals (and some oxides) from finely ground ore based ...
Gravity Concentration
Gravity concentration separates minerals based on density differences. For gold ores, gravity concentrates (jigs, spirals, shaking...

Process · Gold Recovery

Carbon Adsorption
Activated carbon adsorbs gold (as gold-cyanide complex) from pregnant leach solution onto its high-surface-area pore structure. Lo...

Process · Hydrometallurgy

Heap Leaching
Heap leaching is a low-cost hydrometallurgical method for recovering gold, silver, copper, and uranium from ore. Crushed ore is st...

Process · Metal Recovery

Electrowinning
Electrowinning (also called electrolytic recovery) is the process of plating dissolved gold and silver out of strip solution onto ...

Process · Mill Recovery

CIP vs CIL
CIP (Carbon-in-Pulp) and CIL (Carbon-in-Leach) are both agitated-cyanide milling-circuit gold recovery methods. The difference: CI...

Process · Ore Preparation

Agglomeration
Agglomeration is the process of binding fine ore particles together into larger, more stable agglomerates before stacking on a hea...

Process · Recovery

Merrill-Crowe Process
Merrill-Crowe is a precious-metal recovery process that uses zinc dust to precipitate gold and silver out of cyanide-bearing leach...

Product · Gold Room

Doré Bar
A doré bar is a semi-pure gold/silver alloy bar produced at a mine site as the final saleable form before refining. Doré is typi...

Project Delivery

EPCM
EPCM stands for Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Management. In an EPCM contract, the engineering firm delivers the desi...
EPCM vs EPC
EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) is a turnkey, fixed-price contract — the contractor bears construction risk and del...

Reporting Standards

NI 43-101
NI 43-101 (National Instrument 43-101) is the Canadian Securities Administrators' disclosure standard for technical reports on min...
Beyond the Glossary

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