Silver sulfide leaching with a copper-thiosulfate solution in the absence of ammonia

Leaching from silver sulfide using a copper-thiosulfate solution in the absence of ammonia was investigated. It is found that silver sulfide could be effectively dissolved in the copper-thiosulfate system without ammonia. The effects of thiosulfate concentration, copper-to-thiosulfate ratio, agitation vigorousness, pH values, and dissolved gases on the leaching of silver sulfide with the copper-thiosulfate solution were studied. A maximum extraction of 95.1% was achieved with the 0.12 mol/L thiosulfate and the 0.048 mol/L copper sulfate. It is shown that copper-to-thiosulfate ratio is an important factor in silver sulfide dissolution and oxygen is not needed to leach silver sulfide, which leads to the instability of the leaching system at high copper-to-thiosulfate ratio. On the other hand, the silver extraction is not affected by the pulp pH values.