The disclosure is directed to a sulfidizing agent obtainable by mixing M.sub.yS.sub.x and ZSH in a weight ratio of from about 90:10 to about 10:90, wherein M is chosen from Li.sup.+, Na.sup.+, K.sup.+, Rb.sup.+, Cs.sup.+, NH.sub.4.sup.+, Mg.sup.2+ and Ca.sup.2+, y is about 1 or about 2, x is from about 1.1 to about 5, and Z is independently chosen from Li.sup.+, Na.sup.+, K.sup.+, Rb.sup.+, Cs.sup.+ and NH.sub.4.sup.+, and a process for using the sulfidizing agent in the recovery of one or more metal ores and/or polymetallic minerals from gangue.

A method of recovering gold and copper from a sulfide ore includes (a) removing valuable fines from a product stream from a comminution circuit, such as a crushing and milling circuit, for run of mine ore and producing a valuable fines concentrate stream and (b) processing the remaining comminution product stream after valuable fines removal and producing a valuable coarse concentrate stream.

THIS invention relates to a process for the enhanced recovery of chromite and platinum group metals (PGMs) from a mixed chromite/PGM ore. Ore is ground 12, classified 14, to produce a coarse fraction and a fine fraction 36. The coarse fraction is subjected to gravity separation 16 and coarse particle flotation 20 to obtain a chrome concentrate and a PGM concentrate. The fine fraction 36 and PGM concentrate are ground 28, and subjected to conventional flotation 30 to obtain a PGM concentrate product 32. The benefits of this novel configuration of gravity concentration and coarse flotation technologies, as applied to both chromite and PGM recovery, are higher recoveries of chromite in a saleable concentrate, higher recoveries of PGMs and base metals, and lower chromite content in the PGM concentrate.

THIS invention relates a method for processing a sulphide ore containing metal values comprising the integration of a sand heap leach (10) and a flotation process (12), providing a method which is suited to processing ores with significant quantities of leachable sulphides. The method includes a comminution step (14), and the classification of the comminuted ore into an oversize coarse fraction (16), a fine fraction (18) suitable for fine flotation and optionally an intermediate fraction (20) suitable for coarse flotation. A concentrate (30) containing iron sulphides from a fine flotation step (22) and optionally a concentrate (36) from a coarse flotation step (34) are blended with the oversize coarse fraction (16), to obtain a blended ore (39) is stacked and subjected to a heap leach process (40).

A method of recovering gold from gold-containing sulphide minerals in an ore that has a recovery-oxidation curve in a graph of % recovery of gold versus % oxidation of the minerals that has a slope of less than 1:1 in a higher % oxidation part of the curve, includes operating at least one oxidation unit to achieve a target % oxidation for sulphur in the ore that is in a higher oxidation part of the curve and producing an output having liberated gold as a consequence of sulphur oxidation in the oxidation unit and allowing variations of the % oxidation in the oxidation unit during the method.

The present disclosure provides a method of recovering copper, molybdenum, and a precious metal value from a metal-bearing material, the method comprising bulk flotation of the metal-bearing material to form a flotation product, wherein the metal-bearing material comprises a copper compound, a molybdenum compound, and at least one precious metal value, pressure oxidizing the flotation product to form a pressure oxidized discharge, separating the pressure oxidized discharge to form a separated liquid and separated solid, extracting molybdenum, via a molybdenum solution extraction, from the separated liquid to form a molybdenum-containing stream and a copper-containing stream, extracting copper, via a copper solution extraction, from the copper-containing stream, and extracting the precious metal value, via a cyanide leaching process, from the separated solid.

The present invention relates to functionalized hollow glass microspheres for recovering fine hydrophobic particles, and to their preparation method. The invention also relates to a system for carrying out the method for preparing the functionalized microspheres, to a method for selectively recovering fine material and, lastly, to the use of the microspheres in the separation of, inter alia, minerals, micro drops of organic materials, plastics, and pollutants.

A lixiviant medium for extracting gold from a gold-containing solid material contains a polyether-modified siloxane and a non-ionic surfactant. The lixiviant medium can be used in a method of extracting gold from a gold-containing solid material. The lixiviant medium can be prepared from a composition containing a non-ionic surfactant and a polyether-modified siloxane. A method of preparing the lixiviant medium involves mixing the composition with an alkali metal cyanide, a pH regulator suitable for setting a pH of the composition to a value of 9 or higher, and water.

Provided is a method for recovering gold in a cyanide tailing by hierarchical ramified flotation. The method divides a cyanide tailing into coarse and fine-grained products through screen classification, making preparation for hierarchical ramified flotation. The method then conducts flotation of the coarse and fine-grained products with suitable process parameters and reagent systems, and selects a suitable coarse-grained flotation product as a carrier of fine-grained flotation to maximize the recovery efficiency of fine grains. The method improves the overall recovery rate of gold with the hierarchical ramified flotation of coarse and fine grains, series-carrier flotation and combined reagent enhanced flotation. The method has an advanced process, a good separation effect, and can effectively recover fine-grained gold in the cyanide tailing.

In order to decrease arsenic, which is a harmful substance, in a copper concentrate, provided is a method for selectively recovering an arsenic-containing copper mineral from a mixture including the arsenic-containing copper mineral and a non-arsenic-containing copper mineral, and a flotation agent used in the same. For a collecting agent, which is a component of the flotation agent used in a flotation step for selectively recovering the arsenic-containing copper mineral from the mixture including the arsenic-containing copper mineral and the non-arsenic-containing copper mineral, a sulfide compound having an R.sub.1—S—R.sub.2 (in this expression, R.sub.1 is a C.sub.5-.sub.10 alkyl group, and R.sub.2 is a C.sub.1-.sub.10 alkyl group) structure such as methyl n-octyl sulfide or di-n-octyl sulfide is used.