The Possibility of Separation of Heavy Minerals as Byproduct of the Danube River Gravel Sand Extraction

• Published in: Minerals (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 6; p. 659
• Main Authors: Maťašovský, Michal, Sisol, Martin, Marcin, Michal, Uhlík, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2022
• Subjects: By products; critical raw materials; Exploitation; Flotation; Garnet; Garnets; Gold; Grain size; Gravel; gravelly sand; Gravity; gravity and electromagnetic separation; heavy mineral concentrates; Heavy minerals; Ilmenite; Leaching; Magnetite; Mineralogy; Minerals; Monazite; Oxides; Radiation; Rivers; Rutile; Scientific imaging; Sediments; Separation; Separation processes; Titanium dioxide; Zircon; Zirconium dioxide; Danube River; Slovakia
• ISSN: 2075-163X; 2075-163X
• DOI: 10.3390/min12060659

The history of exploitation of gold from the Danube River’s sandy gravels is centuries long. The extraction of valuable heavy minerals (VHM) concentrate was never intended. Our aim is to find out an effective separation process to produce monomineral concentrates of the following minerals: garnet, ilmenite, zircon, monazite, magnetite, rutile, gold. The essential condition is to use no chemistry (no flotation, leaching, activating). The experimental concentrates were prepared by sluicing on active river channel. Next, the separation results were achieved using gravity and electromagnetic methods with different magnetic intensities. The prepared rutile contained from 63.3% TiO2 to 87% TiO2. The ilmenite concentrate contained 20.5% TiO2 and 39.2% ilmenite. The garnet concentrate contained 94% garnet. The monazite concentrate contained 86.6% monazite, and the sum of REE oxides was 50.1%. The zircon concentrate containing 63.7% ZrO2 means that the prepared concentrate contained 96.1% zircon.