2014-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2014 Volume 2: Mineral Processing
| Editors: | Kongoli F |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2014 |
| Pages: | 446 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-04-1 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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SUSTAINABLE MINING WASTE MANAGEMENT IN BOR BASIN, SERBIA
Zoran Markovic1; Florian Kongoli2; Prof Dr Radoje Pantovic3; Zoran Stirbanovic4;1UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE - TECHNICAL FACULTY IN BOR, Bor, Serbia and Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia); 2FLOGEN TECHNOLOGIES INC, MONT-ROYAL, Canada; 3DING MIN.ENG., Bor, Serbia and Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia); 4DIPL. MIN.ENG., Bor, Serbia and Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia);
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 233
Topic: 2
Abstract:
Mining and smelting in Bor Basin is over one hundred years old during which the rich copper ores has been excavated and processed by pyrometallurgical routes. In 1930's the flotation process to produce useful concentrates from ores was introduced due to the fact that copper grade in ores was decreasing. The increase of mining volume generated large amounts of waste materials in the form of solid, liquid and gas. Mining wastes (mining and flotation tailings) consist of about 650 Mt solid materials which is estimated to contains about 750.000 t of metal copper. All the wastes have a negative environment impact but flotation tailings are really a complicated issue. On one hand they contaminate water because they leak from tailing pond in nearby rivers and on the other hand they contain valuable elements such as Cu, Ag, Au, with an average content of copper 0.3%, gold 0.8 g/t, silver 2.4 g/t and sulfur 12.7 %. These valuable components can be extracted from these tailings through their reprocessing and recycling. The process normally consists of following main steps: excavation, repulping, attrition, bulk sulfide and precious metals flotation, bulk concentrate treatment by selective flotation and newly obtained tailings returning to the old closed open pit mine. Extensive laboratory work was undertaken to obtain flotation bulk concentrate with good recoveries of above-mention valuable compounds. For instance, copper recovery in the bulk concentrate was achieved up to 98%. Present activities are orientated in bulk concentrate selection by flotation in order to separate copper minerals from pyrite. For mineral liberation and surface cleaning prior to flotation the attrition technique was applied rather than regrinding. This paper describes the laboratory results of flotation followed by attrition on copper minerals and pyrite. All proposed routes are based on sustainable development concepts applicable in a wide area.