IVS Joint Venture, Saint-Petersburg, Russia:

M. A. Arustamyan, Chief Operating Officer, Candidate of Engineering Sciences

Ural Representative Office of RIVS Research and Production, Uchaly, Russia:

L. A. Nemchinova, Head, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, ufa@rivs.ru

Uchaly Mining and Processing Plant, Uchaly, Russia:

V. V. Zakopailo, Head of Production and Technical Department at Processing Plant
D. M. Altynamanov, Deputy Head of Main Building at Processing Plant

Gold is currently produced from both gold ore and from ores bearing different nonferrous metals, in particular, copper, zinc, silver and lead. In the latter case, gold recovery is assumed co-production. All industrially developed nonferrous metal mining countries follow the global trend of multipurpose utilization of mineral resources. Gold content of nonferrous metal ore is as rule essentially lower than in gold ores but gold production cost may be somewhat reduced in this case. It is noteworthy that in this instance, gold production depends on nonferrous metal demand. The need for efficient technical and technological solutions aimed to improve quantitative and qualitative data of gold produced from copper and copper–zinc ores is predetermined by low gold recovery. In copper-zinc ores, gold is mainly associated with sulfides. Most of gold is fine and very fine particles. In this respect, it is important to develop processing technologies for such ores to ensure maximum possible gold recovery. Mineral dressing technology is being continuously improved in many ways, including the area of coproduction of gold by flotation in copper concentrate or in individual gold-bearing product. This article describes a variant of enhancing gold co-production from sulfi de copper and copper–zinc ore in terms of such type ores extracted from Uzelga and Uchaly deposits and processed at Uchaly Mining and Processing Plants.

The authors acknowledge participation of M. I. Tkachenko, Senior Researcher, RIVS Research and production, and Yu. R. Yagudin, Head Research Laboratory, Uchaly Mining and processing Plant, in these studies.

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