Orenburg State University, Orenburg, Russia

G. A. Ponomareva, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Associate Professor, galy.ponomareva@mail.ru
V. P. Petrishchev, Head of Department, Doctor Geographical Sciences, Associate Professor

The article describes the results of the determination of chemical elements in the waste at the Blyava opencast mining and dumping facility in the Southern Urals as a possible unconventional source of some metals, including non-ferrous metals. Research materials were samples taken from the western overburden dump. The concentration of elements was determined by the atomic emission method. The preliminary preparation of the samples included salting, acid etching and conversion of the obtained salts into chlorides. The instrumental analysis was performed on a Focused Photonics Inc ICP-5000 spectrometer. As a result of the conducted atomic emission analysis, the concentrations were determined for ferrous metals—Fe, Mn, Cr, V; non-ferrous metals (the basis of non-ferrous metallurgy)—Al, Mg, Ni, Co, Cu, Zn, Pb, Ca, Sr, Va, Na, K; rare metals—Rb, Cs; scattered metals of sulfide ores—Tl, Ga, Cd, Se, As. Furthermore, the concentrations of nonmetals—B, S, P—were also determined in the samples from the western dump of the Blyava copper–zinc deposit. The contents of elements in the samples from the western dump were compared with the average contents of these elements in basalt rocks according to K. Tarkyan and K. Vedepol, with the contents of the same elements in the Gayskoe deposit ore (eastern area) and in pyrite ores of the Urals. The comparative analysis shows that the content of many elements in the waste from the western dump is higher than the average contents of these elements in the main rocks. The results obtained for Cu, Zn, Mn and Ni in the waste from the western dump are consistent with the literature data on the average contents of these elements in the ores from the eastern zone of the Gayskoe deposit and in pyrite ores of the Urals as a whole. Thus, the western dump of the Blyava deposit is a possible source of non-ferrous and some rare metals, which requires a more detailed study of man-made dumps at copper–pyrite deposits in the Southern Urals. For another thing, due to exogenous processes, the mentioned these elements continue to enter the environment and pollute it.
The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Grant No. 23-27-10006 “The Analysis of Manmade Geosystem Formation as a Result of Ore Mining in the Orenburg Region Toward Reclamation Management Improvement”.

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