Plutonic-Goldmine

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The Plutonic gold mine is located 82 kilometers east of Peak Hill and 180 kilometers northeast of Meekatharra in Western Australia in Australia. The mine, which is operated by Barrick Gold, is located 13 km from the Great Northern Highway.

History

In 1988 Great Central Mines discovered the gold deposit, which was bought by the company Plutonic gold mine for A $ 50 million. Homestake Mining Company took over Plutonic in April 1998, more than A $ 1.0 billion. Homestake was acquired by Barrick Gold in late 2001.

Geology

The gold deposit is located at the southern end of the Plutonic -Well Greenstone Belt. The greenstone belt contains rocks of Proterozoic and Archean such as granite, gabbro, and a few volcanic, mafic and ultramafic rocks that intruded.

Gold mineralization in different cores with amphibolitic rocks, mafic volcanic and sedimentary rocks to ultramafischne. The mineralization took place with sulfides and oxides. The veins are one to ten feet long and one to three meters thick, the gold associated with quartz de minerals, biotite, titanite, amphibole, epidote, carbonate, tourmaline, Arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, scheelite in the rocks of syenite, diorite, dolerite and peridotite included.

Mine

The mine was enlarged in 1990 as an open pit and from January 1995 to underground mining. Was extended to the underground mining from 1998 to 2000. There are two facilities in which gold is extracted from the rock. A plant can process 1.8 million tonnes of sulphide- bearing rock from the underground and the 1.2 million tons of oxide containing open pit rock.

Crushing, grinding and foaming of the ore, and the recovery of the gold takes place in the two systems.

Gold mining and environmental

The separation of rock and gold is done by gravity and the carbon -in - leach operation. The processing of the rock is carried out in this method, after comminution of the rock, flotation and cyanidation involving activated carbon. For this method, the Plutonic Gold Mine is certified under the International Cyanide Management Code.

In the process of cyanidation gold is chemically bound in highly toxic leachates. After filtration and precipitation occurs brown slurry, from which, after washing and drying, by reduction of raw gold. This process produces hydrogen cyanide and cyanides, which may escape into the environment in spite of recycling of the liquor. All materials incurred in this process are toxic. Although these are easily decomposed and degraded in nature, yet the resulting large slag heaps and Cyanidstäube can be distributed in an uncontrolled manner by wind and water, uncontrolled discharge of toxic substances into the environment and cause serious ecological damage.

Production

Production figures: