IVS Joint Venture, Saint-Petersburg, Russia:

S. P. Nagaeva, Head of Mineralogy Research Laboratory, SPNag@yandex.ru
A. V. Kuptsova, Mineralogist of Production Research Department

Currently the issues of mining waste processing are of high concern and require careful and comprehensive analysis of the waste material composition to be undertaken for predictive assessment of the waste processing approaches. Mineral mining and processing wastes (dirt dumps, tailings pond, etc.) cover vast areas and contain often substantial volume of unrecovered useful components. As regards the content of valuable components, mining and processing wastes acquire the status of man-made deposits as of today. Mineral composition of such deposits is complex and versatile mostly owing to newly generated phases and due to strongly altered primary minerals as affected by time and physicochemical processes. This article reports the results of integrated mineralogical analysis of old waste sampled from tailings of ammonia-carbonate treatment of oxidized nickel ore. The studies involved X-ray phase analysis and optical and electron microscopy. The grain size composition determined by wet screen sizing shows that the samples are mostly composed of slime material. Materially, the samples mostly contain spinal and olivine group minerals as well as serpentine group minerals. Fe-spinels exhibit variable composition and are often aggregates of individual grains cemented by the matrix of the same composition. The balance of metals per minerals shows that ferrum is mostly concentrated in spinel group minerals, while nickel occurs mostly in silicates (serpentines). The magnetic separation of classified product samples shows that separation of material larger than 20 μm is effective, while separation of material of -20 μm size grade is less effective. On the whole, the magnetic separation has allowed the magnetic product with the iron content of 47.31% and the yield of 69.81%. Unfavorable grain size composition of the initial feedstock, nonuniform content of magnetic and nonmagnetic minerals, aggregates of fi ne grains and their mutual magnetization intensity will present difficulties on magnetic concentration and fl otation of such material.

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