Possibilities of using pneumatic separation in the scheme of preparation of samples containing individual inclusions

Carrying out of sampling on ores and products with not high mass fraction of the valuable component represented by precious metals has certain difficulties. Due to the uneven distribution of precious metal in the product and the complexity of reducing the size of metal particles in the preparation of such samples for analysis (crushing and reduction), the relative random error of determination can be large and it leads to discrepancies in the results of parallel analyses. Changing the scheme of sample preparation, namely the introduction of metal extraction into a separate product, separate analysis of the products and the calculation of the mass fraction of the determined metal by the balance equation allows you to conduct parallel analyses of samples containing precious metals with satisfactory convergence. The main methods used for the extraction of free gold, the preparation of the sample for analysis used in laboratories is the gravitational concentration and screen-analysis (separation of large gold on a sieve). This article considers an alternative method of separation of the metal by pneumatic separation. Extraction was carried out on a model material consisting of quartz and lead. The experiments showed the possibility of using pneumatic separation to replace the traditionally used methods of extraction of precious metal.

Volkov P. S. Possibilities of using pneumatic separation in the scheme of preparation of samples containing individual inclusions. MIAB. Mining Inf. Anal. Bull. 2024;(1-1):128—139. [In Russ]. DOI: 10.25018/0236_1493_2024_011_0_128.

Volkov P. S., Engineer of the Department of Mineral Processing, e-mail: PavelVolkov@m.ursmu.ru, ORCID ID: 0009-0003-3416-3131, Ural State Mining University (USGU), Yekaterinburg, Russia.

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