Mechanical Engineering; Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology; General Chemistry; Control and Systems Engineering
Abstract :
[en] A laboratory-scale investigation was conducted to study the effects of flotation reagents and clay minerals on the recovery of electrum from the ore treated at the Dundee Precious Metals Krumovgrad operation. The first part of the study focused on assaying the impact of clays on gold flotation by conducting desliming tests prior to flotation. It was observed that when a large portion of the fines (<10 µm) was removed through desliming, the gold grade in the concentrate increased by a factor of 9. However, this improvement was accompanied by a slight decrease in recovery. Furthermore, a new collector suite was tested in order to increase gold recovery and reduce the dosage of potassium amyl xanthate (PAX) by replacing the current promoter (AERO®238) with a new one called AERO MAXGOLD™900. The best combination was found to be 95 g/t of potassium amyl xanthate supplemented with 4.5 g/t of AERO MAXGOLD™900. The addition of this reagent was seen as a practical method to increase the gold grade in the concentrate, although it did not significantly improve the recovery rate. The potential relevance of the results to deposits and operations with similar characteristics are discussed.
Disciplines :
Geological, petroleum & mining engineering
Author, co-author :
Demeusy, Bastien
Madanski, Deyan
Gaydardzhiev, Stoyan ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département ArGEnCo > Traitement et recyclage des matières minérales (y compris les sols)
Language :
English
Title :
Laboratory flotation study of the DPM Krumovgrad gold ore (Bulgaria) – Effects from improved collector suite and ore desliming
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