North-Caucasian Mining and Metallurgical Institute (State Technological University) (Russia):

Yevdokimov S. I., Associate Professor, Ph. D. in Technical Sciences, eva-ser@mail.ru

Yevdokimov V. S., Bachelor, 19-Vadik-93@mail.ru

The materials under examination were wastes of a hydrometallurgy plant, i. e. cakes of autoclave-sodium leaching of tungsten concentrates (scheelite and wolframite) kept in slurry ponds. They assay 1.5 % of WO₃ and 0.5 % of Mo, and therefore are of considerable interest to the company in terms of potential replenishment of its minerals stock. In developing a mineral processing flowsheet for industrial feed materials, the assumption was that of all the available concentration techniques gravity separation in devices ensuring high concentration and density of grade minerals with a relatively minor sink recovery yield appears to be the most environmentally safe and least cost-intensive. A flowsheet for concentration of sands and overflow of a short-cone hydrocyclone (conicity 90°) by centrifugal concentrators (ITOMAK KN-0.1 and Knelson KC-MD3) was tested in laboratory conditions, and 78.75 % of WO₃ and 57.18 % of Mo was recovered into sink fraction containing 18.07 % of WO₃ and 3.25 % of Mo. The sink fraction can be cost-efficiently treated by full-scale flowchart, but most of cakes (over 95 %) remain outside commercial business stream, and environmental safety of production facilities is still unaddressed. The research project has demonstrated on an experimental basis (by crush testing of GOST 22685 concrete samples), that using float fraction for casting high-density concrete reduces the input of cement by 20–30 %, which means a waste-free flowchart has been offered for recycling tailing cakes of hydrometallurgical production of tungsten thereby making the whole project commercially more attractive.

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