Ore enrichment

At present, enrichment plants use non-ferrous metal ores characterized by a low content of valuable metals. In this connection, it is economically inexpedient to extract metal from poor natural raw materials by metallurgical methods. Rich ore deposits are practically exhausted, and poorer ores are involved in processing.

85-90% of mined ores are enriched. Beneficiation of minerals is  a set of processes of mechanical processing of mineral raw materials in order to extract useful minerals (if necessary, their mutual separation) or remove harmful impurities. The result of enrichment are rich concentrates and waste - tailings. The content of useful minerals in concentrates exceeds the content in the original ore in the range from tens to hundreds of times. Concentrates are then used in metallurgical processing or serve as raw materials for other industries. Waste from beneficiation production mainly contains minerals of host rocks, which are impractical in the current state of metal production, or there is no need for these minerals.

Problems solved by preliminary enrichment of ore raw materials:

• Reducing the costs of subsequent metallurgical processing and reducing the cost of the resulting metallurgical products by reducing the volume of processed material.
• Efficient processing of ores unsuitable for direct metallurgical processing -> increase in reserves of industrial ores.
• Increasing the complexity of using raw materials by separating valuable metals into independent concentrates sent for further metallurgical processing.
• Removal of harmful impurities from concentrates sent for metallurgical processing, which complicate the process of obtaining pure metals.