St. Petersburg State Mining University (Russia):

Petrov G. V., Professor, petroffg@yandex.ru, tel. (921) 410-32-14

Diakite M. L. L., Postgraduate, meddiak7@hotmail.com, tel. (951) 662-36-84

Spynu A. Yu., Postgraduate, sashaspinu@rambler.ru

Processing of sulfide copper-nickel ores at the «Norilsk Nickel» Mine-and-Mill Complex ore-dressing facilities, being predominantly oriented to base metals concentration, causes irrevocable dissemination of noble metals in dressing operations. According to certain estimates, in total up to 20 % of platinum, palladium and rhodium are lost with concentration tailings. Platinum group metals are mainly concentrated in man-caused deposits as dumped sulfide copper-nickel ores' processing tailings, aged pyrrhotine and piled magnetite concentrates, slag-dust dumps. The article considers efficient technologies for secondary platinum-containing raw materials processing with production of platinum-metals concentrates, suitable for subsequent metallurgical treatment. A sufficiently large number of concentration and metallurgical technologies are proposed for the «Norilsk Nickel» Mine-and-Mill Complex man-caused wastes processing. Gravity concentration flow sheet is applied to tailings, including disintegration, classification and additional disintegration in scrubber, production of primary concentrate by means of vibratory-centrifugal and centrifugal separators, with final concentration of produced middling to the required grades. A technology has been developed for platinum group metals re-recovery from tailings by means of magnetic separation. Aged pyrrhotine concentrates are processed with application of flotation, with prior classification and ball mills grinding in order to liberate consolidated grains. A gravity-flotation technology has been developed for treatment of this type of aged concentrates. Magnetite concentrates are treated by a gravity-concentration technology, slag-dust dumps — by means of a processing flow sheet based on X-ray radiometric separation.

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