Mineralogical Factors Affecting Beneficiation-Metallurgy of a Gold Deposit in Africa

Abstract

This is an essay in the field of process mineralogy. Systematic process mineralogy has been done in this study, focusing on a gold deposit in Africa, using automatic mineral analysis system (i.e. AMICS, MLA) combined with optical microscopy. This study finds that gold minerals are mainly native gold, with high fineness of around 900. Intergranular and fracture gold totally occupy 62.77% of gold, and 37.23% of gold appears as inclusions in gangue minerals. The particle size of native gold is fine, with 27.54% portion under 10 μm. Nonmetallic minerals are main gold-hosting minerals, while sulfides are less related to gold, only 32.15%. Taking these features into consideration, flotation of whole sulfides is not suitable for gold recovery in this deposit, while stirring leaching after fine grinding will quite fit.

Keywords

• native gold
• embedded characteristics
• process mineralogy
• beneficiation and metallurgical technology