Geometallurgy and processing of North Ras Mohamed poly-mineralized ore materials, South Sinai, Egypt

Abstract

The present work aims to study the link between mineralogy and process characteristics of North Ras Mohamed ore materials. The chemical nature of the latter was also studied to determine the type of treatment employed from one hand and the preferred lixiviate option from the other hand.For this purpose, three technological samples representing three different deposit types were examined for their potential processing options. These include basal sandstone, aplite dyke and pegmatitic bodies which were found to assay 0.05, 0.04 and 0.06% U, 0.13, 0.10 and 0.07% Th and 0.14, 0.13 and 0.09% REEs respectively, while Nb assays 1.3% and Ta 0.5%, in the pegmatitic ore sample. The corresponding minerals of these elements of interest include thorite and uranothorite in the basal sandstone ore material. On the other hand, the multiple-oxide minerals samarskite, fergusonite and allanite are found in both the aplite and the pegmatite bodies. However, the zircon, fluorite, apatite, titanite and brookite are considered as the main accessory minerals in the three study ore materialsBased on the available chemical and mineralogical data on the three different ore material types of Ras Mohamed area, a physical upgrading process would be required as a major recommendation for future prolific metallurgical work.