gold production

An interesting Gold Mining Company , minerals come from five different mine shafts and four different waste discharges containing rocks are marginal ore processed in a joint plant to produce gold bars.



Samples of run-of-mine ore with top particle sizes of 250 mm are taken with go-belt samplers from the conveyor belts feeding ore to the rail hoppers used to transport the ore to the treatment plant. The sample increments are accumulated in bins, which are transported  by truck to a sample preparation facility. 

Here the bulk samples (approximately 800 kg) are successively crushed and split to provide eight samples for fire assay at the laboratory.

The mean grades from all the sources are multiplied by their tonnages to obtain the gold content per month from each source. The ratios of these individual contents to the total feed to the plant are used to apportion gold delivered from these sources. This process of apportionment is called the ‘gold split’, which is the management tool used to control and monitor the gold produced at each shaft.
 
In the gold split there are three key transfer points: firstly, ore deliveries from belt sampling; secondly, ore into the plant from thickener underflow sampling; and thirdly, gold recovery in bullion plus residue. There are also material balances that are measured between the components of ore delivered from the shafts and the thickener underflow in the plant, as well as between the thickener underflow and the recovery of bullion and residue. 

 The allocation of gold production from multiple shafts feeding a common treatment plant using run-of-mine sampling of ore deliveries

by H.E. Bartlett*, L. Korff†, and R.C.A. Minnitt§


Full text:

 Download