One of the world’s leading gold mining companies operating in West Africa has signed a contract with oxygen delivery system specialist Oxair to build an on-site oxygen tonnage plant.
Reducing its reliance on tradition bulk liquid supply, the gold mining company will gain the ability to generate 6,000kg of oxygen needed at the site each day.
In addition to offering a continuous flow of gas extracted from the atmosphere, on-site generators significantly lower the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with using liquid oxygen.
What role does oxygen play in gold mining? Oxygen plays an important role in both the extraction of gold and the health and safety of mine workers. To ensure that miners are suppliers with sufficient oxygen, several cubic metres of oxygen per miner need to be fed into the mines every hour. The quantity of the oxygen depends on the composition of the gases present, such as hazardous nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide. In extraction, mines that extract gold on an industrial scale usually use the cyanide leaching process. A sodium cyanide solution is allowed to seep through the ground rock, which is the reason why the solution is enriched with artificial oxygen.
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