Evaluation of economic efficiency of mining technogenic deposits of placer gold with the formation of concentration zones

Abstract

Currently, mineral reserves of gold placers are depleted largely due to a significant reduction of geological exploration. In view of the drop in gold production from placers, an important source of gold in many areas of the Far East Federal District becomes waste and natural-and-manmade placer deposits. By experts’ estimates, the resource potential of manmade placer deposits (waste) is very high. Billions of cubic meters of gold-bearing waste is accumulated in dumps. These are, first of all, dredge and sluice tailings dumps. The average gold content of such material mainly agrees with the modern economic standards. Sometimes, it is even comparable with the gold content of natural deposits. Obviously, effective development of manmade placer deposits is possible using new technologies, at selected and optimized design and process variables of mining and processing equipment subject to the whole set of influences. Creation of such technologies is an urgent scientific and technical task within the concept of efficient natural and manmade mineral resources management. The Institute of Mining, FB RAS formulates and accomplishes the research on development and theoretical justification of a geotechnology for manmade mineral deposits on the basis of concentration of valuable components inside waste dumps, which ensures formation of a pay zone nearby the bedrock. This study aims at the economic evaluation of the effectiveness of new organizational and engineering solutions to improve the level and completeness of gold recovery from manmade deposits.The studies were carried out using the resources of the Center for Shared Use of Scientific Equipment “Center for Processing and Storage of Scientific Data of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, funded by the Russian Federation represented by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation under project No. 075-15-2021-663.