Leaching of Silver from Boorchi Ag-Pb Ore in Mongolia with Acidic Thiourea Solution

A hydrometallurgical process to extract silver from the silver-lead ore in Boorchi,Mongolia by using thiourea leaching solution is studied in this work.Through the observation of optical and scanning electron microscopes,and energy spectral analysis,it is determined that 5 kinds of silver minerals exist in the ore,including argentite,Ag-tetrahedrite,Ag-Zn-Sb-tetrahedrite,freibergite and acanthite.The experimental results of direct thiourea leaching of the ore show that 56%～60% of silver is leached.The main reason for the low leaching rate is due to silver minerals enveloped in galena and other minerals,even though the ore is ground to the particle size of 75μm.When the ore is pretreated with ammonium carbonate solution under oxidation,the experimental results of thiourea leaching show that the leaching rate of silver increases to near 75% with the pretreatment.Based on the leaching experiments,a principle hydrometallurgical technological route to extract silver from the Ag-Pb ore is proposed