Today’s concentrators deal with a lot of gold deposits comprising smaller ore bodies, having low concentrations of the metal and situated in remote areas. The cost of detailed exploration and a full-fledged processability study considering the time and labour required may appear to exceed the cost of metal recovered from a deposit or a particular ore body. This paper describes some approaches to examining the gold ores mined at such deposits for processability and to developing gravity separation processes, which help save the time and cost of research without affecting the quality of resultant data. This research relied on the GRG test developed by Knelson in Canada, as well as a stage test developed by Institute TOMS in Russia (designed to determine optimum grinding size and number of processing stages). A simulation study was conducted to understand the recovery of gold during the grinding cycle (Stage 1) and to examine the Stage 2 process in a KC-CVD concentrator including concentrate refinement. The authors determined the distribution size of the feed material for each GRG test stage, documented the total percentage of gold recoverable by gravity separation as a function of the ore size, and established how the ore size and the KC-CVD concentrate output influence the gold recovery. This research study resulted in a process flow chart indicating the concentration performance based on gravity separation techniques.
The paper presents the analysis of studies of the enrichment of sulfide and oxidized ores in Yakutia deposits. The ore of the deposit is a mixture of primary, mixed and oxidized ores. The main useful component of the studied ore samples is gold with a content of 1.5 to 2.8 g/t, the silver content is low – 5-17 g/t. Ore minerals are represented by sulfides, among which pyrite predominates. The total sulfide content does not exceed 3-5 %. The presence in the ore of free and associated gold with a grain size from fractions of a micron to 1.5 mm. Gold is represented by nuggets in intergrowth with sulfides and also forms independent inclusions. Ores are classified as easily cyanidable.
It was found that the content of amalgamable gold is 10-49, the share of cyanidable gold ranges from 66.67-91, the share of refractory gold is 9.0-33.33 %, which in absolute amount equals to 0.24-0.8 g/t. The extraction of gold in gravitation concentrate varies depending on the gold content in the ore and the yield of concentrate and for ores with a gold content of 1.5-2.8 g/t from 40 to 60 %. The direct cyanidation of all studied ore samples established the possibility of extracting gold into solution up to 86.7-92.9 %, the gold content in cyanidation cakes is 0.2-0.3 g/t. Investigations of the gravitation concentrate by the method of intensive cyanidation showed that with an initial gold content of ~ 500 g/t, up to 98.9 % is extracted into the solution. The gold content in intensive cyanide cakes will be 6-15 g/t. A set of studies carried out by the authors of the article at various institutes showed that it is advisable to process ore from the deposit using cyanidation technology with preliminary gravitational extraction of gold.
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