TECHNOLOGICAL STUDIES OF PRIMARY COPPER-PORPHYRY ORES OF THE MALMYZH DEPOSIT

Abstract

With the gradual exhaustion of the explored reserves of deposits of rich and easily enriched copper ores the copper-porphyry ores acquire special importance. At low copper content, deposits of this type contain very significant metal reserves. In addition to copper, the ores may contain molybdenum, gold, silver, selenium, tellurium, rhenium and other valuable components. Most of the world's copper reserves are concentrated in deposits of copper-porphyry ores. Currently, Malmyzh gold-copper-porphyry deposit in Khabarovsk Krai is the largest object of goldcopper- porphyry type in Russia, with low content of 0.4% Cu, and its ores comprise more than 5.634 million tons of copper and 298 tons of gold. The paper presents the results of the first stage of technological studies of primary copper-porphyry
ores of Malmyzh deposit. The paper has quoted the data of chemical, mineral, granulometric composition of ore. Copper content in ore is 0.5%, Au – 0.4 g/t, Ag – 1.6 g/t. The ore has an aggregateembedded, fine-veined and microcracked texture. The main ore minerals are chalcopyrite and pyrite. The forms for separating these minerals are aggregate, finely disseminated with close mutual germination. The main mineral of copper is chalcopyrite. The paper has presented the results of the ore enrichment according to the scheme of collective flotation. Using the IMA-I413 airfleet as a collector allows to obtain the sulphide concentrates with copper extraction – 85–94% with a content of 3.75–10.77% Cu, depending on the size of the crushed ore and concentrate output. Most of the containing rocks 85–89% with copper content 0.01–0.05% can be attributed to dumps.