Kirkland Lake Gold – Detour Lake Mine

Written by: Sharaiz Bhatti

Andre Leite, P. Eng.
Jean-Francois Dupont, P. Eng.
Veronika Raizman, P. Geo.
Paul Andrew Fournier, P. Eng.

Introduction
The Detour Lake mine is an open-pit gold mine
located in North-Eastern Ontario. It is approximately
185 km North-East of Cochrane, Ontario. The life of
the mine is estimated to be around 22 years. It is
expected to produce 659,000 ounces of gold
annually. The Detour Lake mine is Canada’s second-
largest gold-producing mine and is estimated to have
the largest reserves of gold in the Country.
Figure 1. Detour Lake Mine Site Infrastructure (Kirkland
Mine operations in the area first commenced in 1983, Lake, 2020)
and the five millionth ounce of gold was poured in
2019. The mine uses conventional methods of open- Orebody
pit mining along with a large-scale extraction and
refinement process. The process includes gravity Gold at the Detour Lake site is inside greenstone-
separation, leaching, solvent extraction, and several hosted orogenic lode deposits in the Detour Lake and
other processes. West Detour deposits. These deposits are North of
the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone (SLDZ). The
History deposits are in a mineralized corridor that runs for 8
kilometres from east to west. Minerology surveys
The current Detour Lake mine is in the Detour Lake have shown that several rock units in vertical
open pit and underground mine area, which several formations split into patterns parallel to the SLDZ.
companies operated in prior to Kirkland Lake Gold’s Gold Mineralization occurs within these formations.
involvement in the area. Other companies that have
worked in the region include Amoco Canada Gold in the Detour Lake mine is commonly found
Petroleum Company Ltd., Campbell Red Lake around fractured Magnesium-rich, ultramafic
Mines, Dome Mines Ltd., Placer Dome Inc., and komatiitic formations. These formations are in quartz
many others. veins concentrated around areas with high
concentrations of pyrite and pyrrhotite.
Companies have conducted lots of work on this
property, such as geological surveying and Metallurgy
metallurgical testing. Campbell Red Lake Mines In 2020, the Detour Lake Mine produced 516,757 oz
mined the area from 1983 to 1987. Placer Dome Inc. of gold. The ore has a grade of 0.83 g/t Gold Dore’.
conducted underground operations between 1987 & It produced Gold Dore’ a 91.3% recovery. Gold
1999. They also did open-pit mining in 1998. Detour Dore’ is approximately 80% pure gold, and the rest is
Gold began work at the Detour Lake Main Pit in silver and other heavy metals. The metallurgical
2013. Kirkland Lake Gold purchased Detour Gold in balance is shown in Table 1.
2020.

Canadian Milling Practice 2021 1

Leite et al. Canadian Milling Practice 2020

recirculating load of around 35%. The ball mill uses

a mix of 2.5” and 3.25” balls in a 70:30 ratio.
Table 1. Detour Lake Mine Metallurgical Balance
Table 3: Grinding Circuit

As shown in Table 1., 91.3% of the gold is

recovered, which is a relatively high yield. The
concentrate is Gold Dore’ which is further refined to
get pure gold.

Milling Practice Gravity Circuit

From all the feed material, approximately 15% goes
Crushing to the gravity concentration circuit. The gravity
Crushing in this mine consists of a primary, circuit recovers approximately 25% of the gold in the
secondary, and pebble crushing circuit. The primary plant. The gravity circuit contains six gravity
crusher has a maximum design size of 1200 mm, and concentrators, each of which has 3x48” bowls. The
a product with a P80 of 165 mm. The primary circuit gravity circuit uses a batch cyanidation process to
uses a single-stage a 1000 kW 60"X113" HD extract the gold. An electrowinning process is
gyratory crusher in an open circuit. It has a capacity performed on the cyanide solution within a dedicated
of 96,000 tpd with 80% availability and feeds into a cell. The cyanidation process extracts up to 99% of
secondary cone crusher in an open circuit. The the gold in the concentrate.
secondary circuit is kept at high availability and uses
2X750 kW crushers. The secondary crushers crush a Table 4: Gravity Circuit
feed with a P80 of 165 mm into a product with a P80
of 50 mm. Next, the product enters the SAG mill.
The pebble crushing circuit increases crushing
capacity using 2X750 kW pebble crushers. The
pebble crushers circuit crushes the feed to a P80 of
13 mm and processes up to 25% of the fresh feed.

Table 2: Crushing Circuit

Leach and Carbon-in-Pulp (CIP)

The rest of the feed enters the leach circuit and then a
carbon-in-pulp (CIP) circuit where carbon is used for
gold collection. The feed size entering the leach
tanks has a P80 of 95 µm. Leaching occurs for
approximately 29 hours (retention time of feed). The
Grinding CIP process occurs for approximately 80 minutes
The grinding circuit has two lines connecting to the (retention time of feed). The CIP has a carousel-type
crushing circuit. Each line has a twin pinion semi- design, and 350 hp pumps for the tails. There is a
autogenous mill (36'X20') also known as a SAG mill. 0.4% gold loss within the lost carbon in the final
Each SAG mill is connected to a pebble crusher in a tails.
closed circuit. Each line also has a twin pinion ball
Table 5: Leaching Circuit
mill (26'X40.5'). Each ball mill is also in a closed
circuit, connected with hydro-cyclones. The ball mill
circulating load is approximately 250% of the new
feed entering the SAG mill. The SAG mill has a

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Leite et al. Canadian Milling Practice 2020

Figure 2: Detour Lake Mine simplified flowsheet (Kirkland Lake, 2020).

Figure 3: Detour Lake Mine Operating Data (Kirkland Lake, 2020).

Figure 4: Detour Lake Mine Power Consumption (Kirkland Lake, 2020).

Table 6: Carbon-in-Pulp Circuit

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Leite et al. Canadian Milling Practice 2020

Thickening
A pre-leach thickener and pre-detox thickener are
used around the leach circuit. The pre-leach
thickener processes the slurry to a density of around
50 wt% solids. The slurry from the leaching process
moves on to a pre-detox thickener, where it is
thickened to a density of approximately 60 wt%
solids. The overflow of the pre-leach and pre-detox
thickeners recycle into the process water. Both
Stripping, Electrowinning, & Refining thickeners have a solid feed of 2569 tph. The pre-
The stripping system uses an elution circuit that leach thickener has a slurry feed of 7218 tph, and the
utilizes a modified Zadra high-pressure process, pre-detox thickener has a slurry feed of 5283 tph.
which processes the gold-rich carbon solution to Both thickeners are 55 m in diameter.
extract the gold. The solution then moves to the acid
wash system if it contains a high concentration of Table 9: Thickening Circuit
calcium. The acid wash can process up to 10 tpd of
carbon in a vessel using Hydrochloric Acid. The acid
wash is not used unless there is a high build-up of
calcium. Two propane gas-fired reactivation kilns
regenerate 100% of the carbon. The kilns can
reactivate up to 10 tpd of carbon each.
Electrowinning co-occurs with stripping process.
There are six electrowinning cells placed in 3 rows
Tailings
of two that process the CIP solution. There is also The concentrate from the pre-detox thickener
one dedicated cell which processes the solution from undergoes a water dilution process before cyanide
the gravity circuit. destruction. The cyanide destruction system uses
three cyanide destruction tanks. This process uses an
The refining circuit refines the gold from the Inco SO2/air process and a backup liquid
stripping circuit and gravity circuit. The product SO2/sodium metabisulfite process. The slurry then
from electrowinning is first filtered and dried. Next, moves to the tailing’s management area,
fluxes are added to the dried product, and placed into approximately 2 km northeast of the Detour Lake
induction furnaces, where it is melted and then Main open pit. It consists of two storage cells, and
poured. cell 1 is currently estimated to contain 153 Mt of
tailings.
Table 7: Stripping Circuit
Table 10: Tailings Cyanide Destruction

Table 8: Electrowinning & Refining Circuit

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Leite et al. Canadian Milling Practice 2020

Costs https://miningdataonline.com/property/13/Detou
Table 11: Summary of costs (2020) r-Lake-Mine.aspx.

Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. (2020, January 31).

Kirkland Lake Gold completes acquisition of
Detour Gold. GlobeNewswire News Room.
Retrieved December 10, 2021, from
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2
020/01/31/1978175/0/en/Kirkland-Lake-Gold-
Completes-Acquisition-of-Detour-Gold.html.

Summary
The Detour Lake Gold operation is an open-pit mine.
It involves a crushing circuit, a grinding circuit, a
gravity concentration circuit, a leaching & Carbon-
in-Pulp (CIP) circuit, a thickening circuit, and a
tailings treatment circuit. The mine is estimated to
yield a gold recovery of 91%-92% over its lifetime.

References

Fournier, P. A., Raizman, V., Dupont, J.-F., &

Leite, A. (n.d.). (tech.). Detour Lake Operation
Ontario, Canada NI 43-101 Technical Report .

Bob Pisani. (2011, September 1). How the gold

business operates. CNBC. Retrieved December
10, 2021, from
https://www.cnbc.com/2011/09/01/how-the-
gold-business-operates.html.

Leite, A., Dupont, J.-F., Raizman, V., &

Fournier, P. A. (2020). DETOUR LAKE MINE.
Kirkland Lake Gold - Detour Gold. Retrieved
December 9, 2021, from
https://www.kl.gold/our-business/canada/detour-
lake-mine/default.aspx.

Kirkland Lake Gold. (2021). Major Mines &

Projects: Detour Lake Mine. MDO. Retrieved
December 10, 2021, from