CIL/CIP circuits, elution, gold room security
Commissioning software for gold plants where the last hundred metres of the flowsheet is also the most tightly secured room on site.
A gold processing plant runs comminution and leaching through to carbon-in-leach or carbon-in-pulp adsorption, elution, electrowinning and smelting, finishing in a gold room where security procedures matter as much as process performance. Deskely tags every tank, screen, elution column and gold room asset individually, so wet commissioning, cyanide safety verification and gold room security sign-off are each evidenced against the standard that actually governs them.
- Circuits
- Comminution, CIL/CIP, elution, smelting
- Test
- Wet commissioning, gold recovery
- Hazard
- Cyanide handling, gold room security
- Gate
- First gold pour readiness
Choose your project type
The problem
First gold pour has a process gate and a security gate, and neither can be assumed complete.
CIL and CIP circuits string together leach tanks, adsorption tanks, interstage screens, carbon transfer and acid wash systems that all have to be wet commissioned with actual pulp before recovery figures mean anything.
Cyanide is dosed, stored and detoxified under its own safety management plan, and the gold room — elution columns, electrowinning cells, smelting furnace and the security procedures around all three — is commissioned to a standard that has almost nothing to do with the leach circuit feeding it.
Deskely tags leach and adsorption tanks, cyanide handling infrastructure and gold room assets as distinct subsystems, so a construction and process team is not left assuming security sign-off is done just because the leach circuit is hitting recovery targets.
Setting up the register
Leach tanks, cyanide systems and the gold room are structured to match process, safety and security responsibility.
Comminution, thickening, leach and CIL/CIP tanks are tagged individually with their agitators, screens, carbon transfer pumps and interstage screens as sub-assets, so a screen blinding issue is pinned to the exact tank rather than the circuit as a whole.
Cyanide storage, mixing, dosing and detoxification systems sit as their own subsystem with safety-critical checklists tied to the site's cyanide management plan, separate from general process instrumentation.
The gold room — elution columns, electrowinning cells, smelting furnace, weighing and the physical security controls around them — is tagged as its own restricted subsystem, with commissioning checklists that reference the mine's security procedure rather than a standard mechanical checklist.
Execution
Wet commissioning, cyanide safety checks and gold room procedures run on parallel, linked tracks.
Wet commissioning of the CIL/CIP circuit introduces pulp and cyanide in a controlled sequence, with gold recovery, cyanide consumption and residue grade logged per tank so a metallurgist can trace underperformance to a specific stage.
Cyanide safety checklists — bunding integrity, detoxification circuit function, gas detection and emergency response drills — are completed and signed independently of general mechanical commissioning, satisfying the cyanide management plan on its own timeline.
Gold room commissioning runs elution and electrowinning functional tests alongside a security procedure sign-off covering access control, dual custody, CCTV coverage and weighing verification, captured against the gold room tag before the room is authorised for the first pour.
First pour readiness and handover
First gold pour is authorised only once process, cyanide safety and gold room security all carry a signed record.
Mechanical completion and RFSU are issued per tank and unit operation across the leach and adsorption circuit, with performance testing against guaranteed recovery run and signed before the circuit is declared at nameplate.
First gold pour readiness is modelled as its own gate requiring cyanide safety sign-off and gold room security procedure sign-off in addition to process performance testing, so the pour cannot be scheduled on process results alone.
The handover pack for the process and security teams includes wet commissioning recovery data, cyanide management plan compliance records and gold room security procedure sign-off, exported per subsystem for the site's regulator and insurer files.
Gold-in-circuit inventory and mass balance reconciliation
The metallurgical recovery number and the accountant's gold-in-circuit figure have to reconcile before anyone trusts either one at first pour.
A CIL or CIP circuit holds a substantial, constantly moving inventory of gold adsorbed onto carbon across dozens of tanks, and before first pour the site has to establish a defensible gold-in-circuit baseline reconciling assay data, carbon inventory counts and elution strip efficiency, because any later discrepancy is treated as a security or metallurgical accounting question, not a rounding error.
Mass balance reconciliation between head grade, tailings grade and bullion produced is the figure that both the mine's own metallurgical accountant and an external auditor will ask to see first, and it depends entirely on sampling points, carbon transfer records and elution batch data having been captured consistently from the very first tonne of pulp through the circuit.
Deskely captures carbon inventory counts, elution batch strip efficiency and sampling point assay data against the same tank and circuit tags used for wet commissioning, so the gold-in-circuit baseline and the first mass balance reconciliation are built from one continuous record rather than reconstructed from separate lab books once an auditor asks the question.
How it runs
From ore feed to a secured gold pour.
A gold plant's commissioning risk sits in three different places at once, and the register has to prove all three rather than let one stand in for the others.
- 01
Tag process, cyanide and gold room separately
Leach and adsorption tanks, cyanide handling infrastructure and gold room assets registered as distinct subsystems.
- 02
Wet commission the CIL/CIP circuit
Recovery, cyanide consumption and residue grade logged per tank as pulp and cyanide are introduced under control.
- 03
Sign cyanide safety independently
Bunding, detoxification and gas detection checklists completed against the cyanide management plan on their own timeline.
- 04
Authorise first pour on three gates
Process performance, cyanide safety and gold room security procedure sign-off all required before the first pour is scheduled.
FAQ
Questions about Gold processing plants scopes.
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