Precious metals recovery from polymetallic industrial wastes by hydrometallurgical process

The aim of the present work was the application of an hydrometallurgical process for precious metals recovery from polymetallic industrial wastes. Elemental and mineralogical composition hamper an economical treatment by conventional process (cyanidation). By this route, very low gold and silver recoveries were obtained (20-30%), with an high consumption of reagents. Pretreatments have been successful studied in order to eliminate the refractory of the samples. An accurate analysis of the products obtained at the end of the pretreatment was carried out by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).