Institute of Mining, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Khabarovsk, Russia

A. Yu. Cheban, Leading Researcher, Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, chebanay@mail.ru

Due to depletion of resources many valuable mineral raw materials, subsoil users show growing interest in reserves concentrated in thin ore bodies. The advantage of many vein-type gold d eposits is a relatively high content of the metal in ore. However, the development of thin veins using traditional technologies leads to a significant dilution of ore with mineralized host and waste rocks, which significantly reduces efficiency of processing. The author proposes a combined technology for the development of thin and steeply dipping ore bodies of complex structure and with gradient zoning. The technology combines advanced blasting of ordinary and poor ores, as well as, if necessary, mineralized host rocks, using special borehole charges with a doubled cumulative effect, drawing of broken ore and subsequent mechanical cutting of rich selvedge by a remote control milling unit. The milling unit is equipped with a telescopic boom with a cutting head, spacer hydraulic cylinders and an automatic system of positioning in the working space. Ores of ordinary quality are processed using flotation, poor ores are sent to heap leaching, and the selectively extracted especially rich ore is meant for autoclave leaching. The experimental studies carried out to determine the metal content in ore of various size classes after mechanical crushing of rich and ordinary gold-bearing ore show that small size classes are enriched with the useful component, which allows, after screening, to send the fine fraction for processing together with es pecially rich ore. The implementation of the proposed technology will increase the throughout gold recovery.
The studies were performed using equipment of the Scientific Data Processing and Storage Center for Shared Use at the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Project No. 075-15-2021-663.

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