Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russia

A. E. Burdonov, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, Associate Professor, burdonovae@istu.edu
N. V. Murzin, Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences Cheng Mun Il, Post-Graduate Student
T. S. Leonov, Technicist
B. B. Tsybenov, Technicist
Yu. V. Novikov, Senior Lecturer, Candidate of Engineering Sciences

The authors discuss efficiency of processing of gold-bearing mine waste which total billions of cubic meters in volume in the Irkutsk Region and in the other areas of Siberia. The authors conduced an integrated research into the applicability of the centrifugal concentration method to recover fine and very fine free gold from such manmade waste characterized by a low content of the valuable component, with the domination of fine gold fractions and with their nonuniform distribution. Samples of original sands and sluice tailings, taken at three open pit mines in the Irkutsk Region, were treated in a laboratory using centrifugal concentrator Knelson KC-MD3. It is found that the method ensures highly effective gold recovery to concentrate, at a level from 92.7 to 100 %, at the extremely low yield (0.19–0.26 %) and high quality (gold content from 48.9 to 527 g/t) of the concentrate. Emphasis is laid on possibility of profitable processing of low-quality sluice tailings with the initial gold content of 0.01–0.0286 g/t, with reaching complete gold recovery. From the laboratory research findings, high production data of the centrifugal concentration method for manmade placers are found. It is recommended to carry out pilot testing of the method by including in the process flow charts of both basic processing and re-extraction of gold from tailings. The requirement of optimized combination of the proposed method with the conventional sluicing is justified for the creation of an integrated processing technology.
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 25-27-20120.

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