Iron-Containing Minerals in the Biox Process

The rapid development of the industry leads to the use of various types of minerals in large quantities. In particular, the consumption of non-ferrous and rare metals is increasing, in addition, their reserves on an industrial scale are sharply decreasing. A quarter of the ore gold reserves are refractory gold-arsenic ores concentrated in large deposits. Due to the presence of finely disseminated submicroscopic gold in sulfides, the use of traditional cyanidation technology is ineffective, and the presence of elevated amounts of arsenic and antimony complicates the processing of concentrates at metallurgical plants. Deposits of refractory ores are not put into operation due to the lack of industrial technology for processing refractory concentrates. Therefore, the problem of developing and implementing in the gold mining industry an effective environmentally safe biohydrometallurgical technology for extracting gold from refractory gold-arsenic concentrates is of national importance and is very relevant. Processing or beneficiation of ores with a reduced content of metal, that is, unnecessary for use, requires their processing in large quantities. This significantly increases the cost of metal production. Given this, mining and metallurgical enterprises are recommended to find low-cost and efficient methods of processing low-metal ores and use them in order not to increase the cost. These include hydrometallurgical, and especially bacterial-chemical methods.