Joint Enterprise of Scientific and Production Association “RIVS”, Saint Petersburg, Russia:

E. N. Shumskaya, Leading Researcher, e-mail: rivs@rivs.ru
O. Yu. Poperechnikova, Head of a Sector of Technological Investigations of Mineral Raw Materials
A. V. Kuptsova, Mineralogist
B. V. Bala, Chemical Engineer

As a rule, iron-oxidized low-sulphide gold-copper ores have a complex chemical composition and are hard to enrich. The complex character of mineralization presupposes a non-standard approach to enrichment. When it comes to free gold ore, a decision has to be made between gravitation-flotation and gravitation scheme. Researching the morphology of gold, extracted by different methods, allows determining the most rational technology. The extraction of copper from such ores is often difficult due to its dispersed impregnation in ore and non-ore minerals, independent inclusions of copper are in an oxidized form, which is difficult to extract. The absence of magnet forms of iron-ore minerals require a special approach to solving the task of obtaining a ferromanganese concentrate. A detailed research of chemical composition of the complex gold ore at the Shiraldzhin deposit, which contains oxidized iron minerals, resulted in an enrichment technology, composed of two isolated cycles of obtaining gold-containing and ferromanganese concentrates. As the parameters of extracting gold through flotation and gravitation-flotation technologies were close to each other, the flotation scheme should be preferred as it is easier to realize in industrial conditions. Iron minerals in the ores are nonmagnetic (goethite) and weakly-magnetic (hematite). The latter ones are lesser in quantity, therefore, the flotation technology was chosen to obtain ferromanganese concentrate, when a Fe – Mn concentrate is obtained in the form of a chamber product after the subsequent flotation of carbonates and silicates from gold flotation tailings.

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