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.
Technological Developments in Wet Gravity Separation Processes
