From the Archives...Direct Elution Heating

The gold price is up, the Aussie dollar is down.  Seems like a good time to dust off that gold plant you mothballed a couple of years ago.  But you find that the thermal oil in the elution heating system has moisture in it and there is sludge and corrosion all through it, and the heat exchanger plates are pitted because the system wasn't flushed when it was put to bed.  And a whole new thermal oil circuit is not really viable...who knows how long the run on gold will last this time?

​Perhaps a direct fired elution heater would be a better option?  But what are the benefits and the downsides of going direct?

​In answer to this, we have dusted off a piece written by Jon in 2004 on direct fired elution systems, and (like many things in process engineering), nothing has really changed.  You can find the article on our Resources page, but to make your life easier, here's a link.

direct_elution_heating.pdf
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