Authors: A. Cole, J. McMullen, K. Thomas, S. Dunn
2001 CMP, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
The roasting and gas handling circuits of the Barrick Gold's new Roasting Facility at the Goldstrike Mine in
Nevada, USA incorporate well proven technologies in a unique combination. During the design of the
plant, every effort was made to utilize the best available technologies from the perspective of capital,
environment and operating costs.
Product from the up-stream dry grinding circuit requires roasting to maximize gold recovery. The roaster
utilizes Freeport-McMoRan whole ore roasting technology with pure oxygen as the oxidizing gas. This
process was chosen based on its proven application on Carlin-type "double refractory" ores. Double
refractory is indicative of the gold being difficult to direct leach due to a combination of pyrite
encapsulation and the carbonaceous preg-robbing of the ore.
A very extensive gas cleaning train follows the roaster and comprises direct cooling, dust scrubbing,
indirect cooling, wet electrostatic precipitation, mercury scrubbing, SO2 scrubbing, CO incineration and
NO× reduction before venting to the atmosphere.
The roasted calcine is quenched, neutralized and then thickened before leaching in the carbon-in-leach
circuit.
