In this project,an Arduino used for monitoring and controlling the pH and ORP in the slurry continuously. The idea was to introduce a technology to determine the pH and ORP in the slurry and controls the pumps automatically to keep the level at the set point.
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Awesome, what type of pulp?
What we are doing at Curtin University is finding a new technique to replace cyanide with non toxic lixiviant for gold extraction and I used this Arduino project to keep the pH and pulp potential level in the solution at a set point during the testworks.
Usually pulp contains 20% solid ( samples from different type of gold mines) and 80% solution, which contains tap water and different non toxic lixiviant for gold and copper extraction.
to keep the pH at set point will need to add pH modifier which could be an Alkaline solution (usually 0.5 Mol Sodium Hydroxide).
Also Hydrogen peroxide 5% (H2O2) used for increasing the ORP.
Neat. I had to look up Eh.
Yes, ORP (Oxidation Reduction Potential)
This is a great application. well done. how can i find out how to do this?
Regards,
Mark
Hi Mark,
This was part of my PhD. We’re developing a new lixiviate for gold extraction. We need a system to monitor and control the pulp chemical properties (pH, dissolved oxygen and ORP) during leaching so I built a controller with a Micro-controller and I used the Atlas-Scientific probes to read the pulp chemical properties.
pH was controlled by pumping a pH modifier which was 0.5 mol NaOH solution and dissolved oxygen by purging oxygen and nitrogen.
Furthermore, PID loop feedback mechanism was programmed into the controller.
Regards,
Alireza
Hi Alireza,
This is fascinating, as I am a metallurgist by trade but spent a lot of time problem solving and doing testwork over the years.
I have a small gold prospect as a hobby and am trying to build a prospectors gold plant for myself (long term goal).
Short term - I want to build a small pH/eH controller for a metallurgical test program I am carrying out and am starting to get into the Arduino environment.
(Just to advise you, I am in contact with the CSIRO ref glycine and understand you cannot tell me of that aspect); however am interested to see how successful the controllers were and if you can offer any ideas on resolution limits or traps for beginners.
Regards,
Mark Hargreaves
Hi Mark,
To start with Arduino you need to know some basic of programming with C language and some basic of electronics.
During my Batchelor studies, I’ve done some training courses for electronic, C and Visual Basic programming languages. If you don’t know about them it may be difficult to start. There are some good sources to learn. You can search Arduino or you can check the Arduino.cc website.
FYI, I’ve check the controller against the commercial reader (TPS) and the reading was interestingly close specially in room temperatures and up to 50oC. For pH around 0.1 difference, Eh 20mv and DO 2 ppm in high level ( 15 to 25 ppm).
Regards,
Alireza
Thanks for that.
I have a background in BASIC, VBA, Miniwaft, Fortran, Pascal, C, and Visual Basic so the programming is easy…
I am trying to get my head around the datalogging and interfacing.
There are many net resources out there and each have a different way of doing it. I just bought an ESP266 shield
and am hoping that will make it easy to interface.
Its good to know that the readings are accurate - that tells me I am not wasting my time if I try to do it.
Regards,
Mark