160  Mineral Processing Technology (MPT 2007)

Vantage of Gravity Separation Techniques to Recover

Gold from the Vintage Dumps
V.G. Suresh Kumar*, Malay Mandal** and M. Shankaragouda***
*Metallurgist, **Dy. General Manager, ***Manager
Hutti Gold Mines Company Limited,
Hutti

ABSTRACT: Attempts were made here to classify and concentrate sand and gold. The tests were conducted on
lab scale in the in house R&D plant of HGML. These studies make a new path for establishing a full fledged
tailing treatment plant with integration of existing tailing treatment. This paper throws the light on advanced
gravity techniques to treat abandoned gold ore tailings by using Falcon concentrator with in-vogue cyanidation
coupled with classification.

1. INTRODUCTION deve-loped to treat them must be not only simple

Waste recycle is no doubt one of the today’s
burning issues in any industry; Metallurgical
operations throughout the world generating waste
are not excep-tional one. The Hutti Gold Mines
Company Ltd. (HGML) a Karnataka Govern-
ment under taking, the premiere Gold producer in
India and 40th member of the World Gold
Council, was started in the year 1947 and till now
nine million tonnes of ore was treated with a
present day installed capacity of 1950 TPD. The
company had adopted new technologies with the
advancement and pertinent to the time. The
tailing generated after treatment of gold ore by
the different established processes like earlier
mercury amalgam-mation, there after cyanide
leaching – Merill crowe process and now ulti-
mately Cyanidation – CIP process are stacked in
tailing dump. The tailing in the early stages was
stacked as it was basis i.e. comparatively coarse
in particle size & it is of high amount of residual
gold value. Huge tonnages of abandoned tailings
are available to reprocessing and recover gold
from it.
Storage and disposal of this massive
quantum of tailings requires huge land associated
with environ-mental problem. This led to
widespread concern in the minds of process
engineers and environmentalists. As these wastes
are generally low-value products, the cutting
edge technologies of today can be the solutions
for the vintage dumps. Therefore, the processes
but also cost effective. A part of now abandoned
dumps which are of comparatively high gold
content can be effectively treated to recover the
coarse sand for filling the voids in under ground
and to recover the gold available in it, which may
meet the process cost of recycling.
1.1 Tailing Dumps
There are mainly two tailing dumps in HGML
premises. About 8.0 million tonnes of tailings
was stacked in the abandoned old tailing dump.
The new tailing dump of about 1.0 million tones
of tailings was deserted after plant expansion and
introduction of the processes like cyanidation-
CIP process and new tailing classification
system.
At the beginning of the mine, only gravity
process was practiced to recover gold and tailing
generated from it was stacked in the old tailing
dump. Latter on cyanidation process was
introduced along with gravity process. A part of
the old tailing dump of about 87154 tonnes
containing considerably high gold count i.e.
about 1.15 g/t was generated at early operational
stages of the plant, only by gravitational process.
The high count of these tailings was mainly due
to the coarse grinding i.e. about 80-100 mesh in
particle size and by treatment of relatively high
grade ore about 10g/t. Later on, tailing containing
gold value of about 0.4 to 0.6 g/t generated from
the cyanidation process was dumped by the side
161  Mineral Processing Technology (MPT 2007)
of these high value tailings. Tailings so generated
from these two pro-cesses got mixed up in due
coarse of time because of erosion of lighter
particle and segregation effect.
After abandoning the old dump, from the
year 2001 onwards the new tailing dump was
constructed with embankments of waste rock,
after expansion of mill and subsequent adoption
of CIP & modified sand classification system.
The residual gold of about 0.3 to 0.4 g/t, in
present day tailings is being disposed in the new
tailing dump.
1.2 Environmental Considerations
The abandoned mine wastes produces a lot of
environmental pollutions into the mine areas as
well as in its vicinity. The source of environ-
mental pollution is the metallic waste rocks
generated from the mine and the metallurgical
plant tailings. Environmental manag-ement of
these mine wastes is not only a costly affair but
also cumbersome.
Afforestation efforts towards retarding the
environment pollution hazard are a very
expensive affair and it is not a permanent remedy.
The major constituents of the mill tailings being
about 55 to 60% of silica dust and the balance
amphibole minerals causes lung diseases by
inhalation of the same.
1.3 Tailings Treatment
In recent years, the treatment of the final tailings
has attracted increasing interest. Pre concen-
tration of such tailings is usually required to
allow satisfactory gold extraction and economic
viability. One of the proven pre concentration
methods is the classification and gravity
concentration.
Recovery via gravity is one of the oldest
mineral processing methods available to treat
these tailings. Recently, with the push towards
more sustainable environmental outcomes, the
benefits of gravity separation have become more
apparent compare to the other chemical
techniques.
Taking in to these considerations an attempt
has been made to recover the precious residual
gold as well as valuable coarse sand for fill the
voids in under ground stopes from old dump with
a target of low capital costs, low environmental
impact and maximum return.
2. EXPERIMENTATION & RESULTS
By considering the high demand of filling sand in
under ground and value addition of gold
recovery, the plans has been made and test work
was conducted in a sequence to reduce process
costs. Studies were conducted in the laboratory
stage for finding the suitable process route to
treat the old abandoned tailings with most
economical feasible way.
Some of the available economic tailing
treatment process routes are:
i.Direct cyanide leaching & classification.
ii.Falcon concentration, concentrate leaching &
classification.
iii.Classification & classified sand leaching.
For preliminary evaluation of the above
tailing treatment processes, and finding out the
average gold content and coarse sand availability,
samples were collected from 26 locations of old
dump at different levels at a depth of 10-15 feets,
and thoroughly mixed, homogenized sample was
taken for the study. The average gold value of
these samples was 0.66 g/t and 39% by weight
being +325 mesh in size.
The mineralogy of the old dump sand is
given in Table-1; the material is a rock powder
with predominantly grey to brownish grey colour
and some slightly recessed light colour.
The analysis confirms that coarser fractions
(+325#) is about 39% by weight having an
average assay value of about 0.5 – 0.7 g/t and
61% by weight of fine fraction also contains gold
of 0.4 g/t. Considering the above analysis and
mannual panning clearly shows some of the
liberated gold present in these dumps and plans
has been made to find the maximum gold
recoverable from these tailings by cyanidation
with respect to time, cyanide dosage and also
hydrogen peroxide addition as an oxidant. The
leaching tests were conducted in Lab Jar mills.
Table1: Mineralogy of Hutti Old Dump Tailings
Quartz 60-65 %
Carbonates 10-15 %
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Mica + Chlorites 20-25 % Geothite 1%
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Pyrite Traces Arsenopyrite Traces
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Magnetite Traces thought that to separate the coarse sand from
Ilmenite Traces these dumps by classification. During classi-
fication the gold also may be getting concen-
And finally optimized the parameters with trated along with coarser sand and confirmed the
15hrs leaching time, 0.6 kgs/t of sodium cyanide leachability of gold in these coarse sands. The
with 0.06kg/t of hydrogen peroxide. Cyanidation cyanidation result of coarse sand (+325#) is
with optimum conditions obtained was gives the given in Table-4. These trials confirmed that
maximum recovery of 35-40%. The results are there is sufficient gold value present in leached
given in Table-2&3. residue, which may be amenable for further
treatment.
Table 2: Leaching trails carried out in Lab jar mills
The liberation characteristics of the gold in
Feed Residue % the sulphide and coarse gangue (gold liberation
Trail No.
g/t g/t Recovery
versus grind size) are the first and most important
1 0.66 0.40 39.4 of the two. If fine grinding can liberate a
2 0.66 0.45 31.8 reasonable amount of the gold, then the next
3 0.66 0.45 31.8 important issue is how effectively these two
4 0.66 0.40 39.4
constituents can be concentrated. Flotation will
achieve high sulphide recovery but is usually
Average 0.66 0.42 36.9 costly. Continuous centrifugal gravity concen-
tration offers a viable solution to the recovery of
Table 3: Variation of Cyanide dosages both sulphides and coarse gangue however
Cyanide Residu % selectivity is also likely to be a problem. The
Trial Feed
No.
Kg/t
g/t
e Recovery possibility of improving concentrate grade by
g/t using a Falcon SB separator was investigated.
1 0.5 0.66 0.45 31.8
2 1.0 0.66 0.40 39.4 Table 4: Leaching of +325# sample:
3 1.5 0.66 0.40 39.4 Trial Grading Cyanide Feed Residue %
4 2.0 0.66 0.40 39.4 No. -200# Kg/t g/t g/t Recovery
1 60.0 0.6 0.85 0.45 47.1
Presently shortage of coarse sand for filling 2 55.6 0.6 0.85 0.50 41.2
the voids in under ground, low costs of capital 3 57.1 0.6 0.85 0.50 41.2
equipment and simple process route; it was

Table 5: Falcon Concentration of dump tailings

Assay Falcon concentrator results
Test No. value Weight, % Assay value Recovery%
tailings g/t Conc. Tails Conc., g/t Tails, g/t Conc.
1 0.74 1.01 98.99 29.2 0.45 39.9
2 0.79 0.88 99.12 22.0 0.60 24.6
3 0.55 0.89 99.11 11.6 0.45 18.8
4 0.77 0.89 99.11 19.2 0.60 22.3
Average 0.71 0.92 99.08 20.5 0.53 26.4

Table 6: Leaching of Falcon Concentrate

Trial No. Cyanide, Kg/t Grading, -200# Feed Residue % Recovery
1 2.0 80% 20.5 0.45 97.8

Table 7: Falcon Concentrator trials: [leached residues]

165  Mineral Processing Technology (MPT 2007)
Falcon concentrator results
Assay value
Test No. Weight, % Assay value Recovery%
(tailings),g/t
Conc. Tails Conc., g/t Tails, g/t Conc.
1 0.42 0.7 99.3 17.6 0.30 29.2
2 0.41 1.4 98.6 8.0 0.30 27.5
3 0.44 0.8 99.2 17.6 0.30 32.1
Average 0.42 0.97 99.03 14.4 0.30 29.6

Table 8: Leaching of Falcon Concentrate (obtained from direct leaching)

Trial No. Cyanide, Kg/t Grading, -200# Feed Residue % Recovery
1 2.0 80% 0.30 0.20 33.33

At this stage it was decided to examine the
probability of concentrating gold by gravitational
method and leaching of concentrate by effective
cyanidation method. For the purpose a campaign
was run with laboratory Falcon concentrator-SB
and collected concentrate was reground for better
gold recoveries in effective cyanidation. The
results are given in Table-5&6. From the results
it is clear that concentration of gold to the extent
of only 20 times or maximum 40 times was
possible with rejection of waste up to 98-99%.
And this gold recovered sand was clubbed
with present plant classification-gold recovery
system for further gold recovery and to separate
coarse sand.
The leaching experiments at this time was
conducted in 36 ltr capacity agitators, leached
residues was passed through Laboratory Falcon
SB concentrator and effective cyanidation of
reground concentrate with optimum conditions.
The results are given in the Table-7&8. And
calculated the maximum gold recovery attain this
method was. Based on these trials feasibility
study was done with a treatment capacity of 300
MT per day of tailing. And it will produce about
90 Mt of coarse sand is suitable for under ground
stope filling.
2.1 Plant Standardization
Based on the results obtained from the above
experimentation and obtained optimum para-
meters, Flow sheet has been formulated for
treating 300 MT tailing treatment capacity per
day. And conducted the feasibility of the process.
Taking into consideration of maximum
tailing treatment capacity of about 300 tons per
day by mechanical handling and using JCB &
tippers, treating with established old agitators,
new 40 tph falcon concentrator and established
classification system, concentrate produced
would be about 2.8 tons per day and treatment of
this small quantity of concentrate will not be
difficult. This will yield minimum 112 gms of
gold per day and additional some amount of
silver as a by-product. Operating cost from the
above process routes will meet the processing
cost of recycling with an additional sand
generation of 90 tonnes per day. The present cost
of stowable sand from market is about Rs. 240/-
per tonne. With the above process route a
revenue generation of about Rs. 21,600 per day
in terms of stowable sand can be achieved
additionally.
3. CONCLUSIONS
• The innovative flowdiagram outlined above
has the opportunity to unlock access to gold
ore tailing dumps in areas where environ-
mental and or feasibility factors have until
now precluded access.
• Additional coarse (stowable) sand generation
after processing of abandoned tailings in the
classification system.
• Enhances the life span of dam to the same
extent.
• The sulphide mineralization removed from
the bulk of the tailing material, the potential
for mobilization of heavy metals and acid
generation is able to reduce
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