This document specifies operationally defined methods for the determination of total cyanide in various types of water such as drinking water, ground water, surface water, wastewaters, metallurgical processing tailings reclaim solution, heap leach barren solution, mill slurry tailings filtrate and leaching solutions, with cyanide concentrations from 5 µg/l to 2 000 mg/l expressed as cyanide ions in the undiluted sample. The range of application can be extended by reducing the sensitivity (Figure A.1.).

NOTE ISO 2080:2008, 3.105, defines free cyanide. The concentration of total cyanide as defined in ISO 2080:2008, 3.191 includes free cyanide, cyanide complexed with metals in solution as cyanide anion, but not necessarily all of the metal cyanide complexes present as determined by a specified analytical method.

In this method, six suitable mass concentration ranges from 5 µg/l to 50 µg/l, from 50 µg/l to 500 µg/l, from 0,5 mg/l to 5 mg/l, from 5 mg/l to 50 mg/l, from 50 mg/l to 500 mg/l and from 500 mg/l to 2 000 mg/l are described.