Properties of Fine-Grained Rock Waste from the Pilawa Gorna Amphibolite and Migmatite Aggregates Production Plant

Abstract

In the course of mining and processing of almost all petrographic varieties of rock raw materials for the production of building and materials, aggregates for road and railway construction, waste is generated. These are usually fine-grained fractions of these rocks that are difficult to manage and are deposited at dumps. The article presents and describes the results of the physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties of fine-grained waste from the production of amphibolite aggregate from Pilawa Gorna in Lower Silesia (S-W Poland). Such studies have not been carried out on this waste before. The tested waste is a very fine-grained dusty material (<0.100 mm) originating from the dedusting of the crushing and classification operations during the production of aggregates. Preliminary studies of the separation of the tested material using collector-less flotation and gravity separation are also presented. Detailed chemical analysis shows that most of the elements in the studied rock dust occur in abundance close to the average in the Earth’s crust. The collector-free flotation of the investigated sample allows effective separation of graphite and the part of sulfide minerals Cu, Ni, and Mo. The presented results may be the basis for further research and development of the concept of their economic use.