Sunrise-Dam-Goldmine

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The Sunrise Dam gold mine is located 770 kilometers south-east of Perth, 220 kilometers northeast of Kalgoorlie and 55 kilometers south of Laverton in Western Australia in the eastern goldfields of Western Australia on the east side of Lake Carey.

The gold mine is 100 per cent owned by Anglo Ashanti Gold.

History

The gold deposit was discovered in August 1988. 1993 the incidence was estimated at 2.3 million tonnes at a grade of 4.6 grams per tonne and mining began in 1995, which reached a depth of 440 meters in 2008. In 1999, AngloGold, the mine of Acacia Resources Ltd., began in 2003 with the underground.

The power plant of the mine was operated with diesel generators and 2008 replaced by LNG gas turbines to minimize costs and minimize pollutant emissions.

Geology

The area has the typical profile of the flat landscape of the Yilarn Craton. At Lake Carey are sandy and chalky dunes, flat salt pans and shallow eroded deposits. At Sunrise Hills enters ferruginous banded rock to the surface.

The gold-bearing ore deposit is located in the Norseman - Wiluna green belt. In the vicinity of this gold deposit there are other gold deposits, which are mined. The banded iron-bearing rocks of the Sunrise Dam gold mine, the deposits reached a thickness 2-10 meters, contains metasedimentary, metavolcanics and metaklastische rocks and magnetite- tuffs. In these rocks intruded quartz and feldspar porphyries. In the quartz- bearing veins that formed during the Sunrise Abschering, there is gold, which was also deposited to the surface due to weathering.

Mine operation and environmental

Support will be given the rock in traditional technique. The rock extracted is moved with wheel loaders and dump trucks, and transported to conveyor belts. 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.

In the process of cyanidation gold is chemically bound in highly toxic leachates. After filtration and precipitation occurs brown slurry is obtained 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 cyanide dust may be distributed in an uncontrolled manner by wind and water, uncontrolled discharge of toxic substances into the environment and cause serious ecological damage.

Manufacturing plant of mining

Conveyor belt system

Sunrise power plant

Engine of the stone mill

Mine site, on the left is waste pond

Production Ergebnise

Overview of the production figures: