Cyanide Process - Practice Questions & MCQ

The cyanide process, also called the Macarthur-Forrest cyanide Process, method of extracting silver and gold from their ores by dissolving them in a dilute solution of sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide. The process was invented in 1887 by the Scottish chemist John S. MacArthur, Robert W. Forrest, and William Forrest. The method includes three steps:

• Contacting the finely ground ore with the cyanide solution.
• Separating the solids from the clear solution.
• Recovering the precious metals from the solution by precipitation with zinc dust.

                           more electropositive
                                   metal

NOTE: It is a metallurgical process/technique for extracting gold from low-grade ore by converting the gold to a water-soluble coordination complex