JSC “Leading Scientific-Research Institute of Chemical Technology”, Moscow, Russia

A. V. Kurkov, Head of the Project Office No.1 “Complex processing of raw materials”, e-mail: avkurkov@vniiht.ru

S. N. Shcherbakova, Senior Researcher

Institute of Comprehensive Exploitation of Mineral Resources (Russian Academy of Sciences), Moscow, Russia

P. M. Solozhenkin, Chief Researcher

This paper demonstrates the possibility of expanding the antimony resource base in Russia by extracting and processing the multimetal gold-antimony ores of Kyuchus deposit in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia. As a gold-bearing resource, Kyuchus ores are classified as refractory and difficult in terms of processing. This is due to the presence in the ore of arsenic, organic carbon, mercury and due to most of the gold submicroscopically impregnated in iron sulfides and sulfoarsenides, which, in turn, are finely dispersed in the host rocks (≤ 0.1 mm). Compared with gold-bearing sulfides, antimony sulfide is characterized by larger buildups. According to gravitational tests of 1 mm ore, antimony sulfide release is 94%. Results of flotation recovery of antimony from the goldantimony Kyuchus ore are presented for the first time. Before the concentration of gold, flotation was used to extract saleable (≥60% Sb) antimony sulfide concentrate from the ore sample containing approximately 4% of antimony and 10 g/t of gold, with 96% of antimony recovery. Release of gold to antimony sulfide is minimal (as low as 2.8%). Subsequent recovery of gold using the gravity flotation process from the antimony sulfide flotation tail allows to extract for further hydrometallurgy an enriched product with 44.3 g/t gold content at 80.6% recovery. Considering the possibility of hydrometallurgical processing of the gold sulphide slurry, total gold recovery can be as high as 95%. Collected data on the quality of the antimony concentrate as well as the degree of antimony and gold recovery are comparable with the best performance achieved in the processing of Yakut rich gold-antimony ores. Recovery of antimony to commercial products in the integrated processing of Kyuchus ores significantly increases the value of the deposit and improves the technological and economic efficiency of the industrial development of Kyuchus deposit.

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