The principle of combined technologies

"The hydrometallurgical technology created by the authors annually allows to produce up to 50 thousand tons of cathode copper per year worth up to 350 million dollars."

Oleg Kuznetsov, President of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences,
USSR State Prize laureate, Doctor of Technical Sciences,
Professor

The scientific discovery of Kazakhstani scientists makes it possible to obtain polymetals from poor raw materials.

For Kazakhstan, which is one of the world leaders in terms of mineral resources, the situation is complicated by the fact that its mineral deposits are inferior in quality to many countries. Therefore, the republic needs to create innovative technologies capable of solving the problems of expanding the resource base of polymetallic raw materials and developing metallurgy through the processing of substandard poor ores. Only those groups of scientists and practitioners who are able to provide a comprehensive and completely unconventional approach to solving the problems of raw material extraction and processing can achieve serious success here.

This is what distinguishes the work submitted by a group of authors to our academy to register a scientific discovery. Experts have recognized that it fully meets the requirements for scientific discoveries.

The scientific discovery, authored by Alma Terlikbayeva, Nurmukhambet Abdibekov, Dosmurat Aitkulov, Alexander Ananin, Nikolai Buktukov, Anatoly Volkov, Larisa Kushakova, Viktor Shevko, formed the basis of the work "Creation and industrial development of fundamentally new technologies of extraction and processing, which ensured highly effective involvement in economic turnover of hard-to-recover, low-quality and decommissioned reserves of polymetallic raw materials of Kazakhstan". A team of authors has been nominated for the Al-Farabi State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the field of science and Technology for 2021.

Labor differs markedly from similar technological projects in its organic coupling of two industries - mining and metallurgy. It presents the results of theoretical and applied research in the field of mining and metallurgy on the creation of new complexes for the extraction and processing of small, unclaimed and decommissioned reserves and new metallurgical technologies for the complex processing of substandard, difficult-to-enrich lead-zinc raw materials based on the simultaneous production of several types of branded products in a furnace unit. During his work, the scientists have protected 21 patents.

The authors have created and implemented several highly efficient technologies for processing off-balance sheet and off-balance sheet polymetallic raw materials. The Zhezkazgan copper deposit has mastered the technology of ore extraction with the repayment of the depleted space. Since 2004, more than 40 million tons of copper ore have been additionally mined at the deposit using this technology. Thanks to the original technologies, a significant economic effect was achieved - about $ 1.5 million - at two Kazakh mines, Maleevsky and Tishinsky.

Or, for example, a new technology for the destruction of hard and abrasive rocks in underground mining. This hydraulic pulse technology, which uses the energy of a water jet with a velocity of 1 km per second, has an impact power of 500-600 kJ. The method increases mining productivity by up to 15 times, is safe and reduces the amount of ventilation in mines by 8 times.

The work performed for Kostanay Minerals JSC is very effective and economically feasible. The methodology developed and implemented by the authors for organizing dump formation, taking into account the interaction of dumps with the sides of the quarry, allowed to obtain an economic effect in the amount of 384 million tenge.

The metallurgical part of the work is also diverse. It is characterized by a fairly high degree of completion of physico-chemical research in the field of reduction and ignition processes and the creation of new technologies on this basis, which usually have no analogues in world practice. The novelty and originality of these technologies are related to the fact that the authors proposed and implemented the principle of combining several types of branded products and artificial raw materials for the production of commercial products in one technological unit, an ore thermal and a rotary kiln, which was not previously used in metallurgical practice.

The combination of technologies for the simultaneous production of several products makes it possible to involve various substandard natural raw materials and man-made formations in the production sector. Perhaps, it turned out to be somewhat unexpected that when several substances are formed in one reaction space, the trajectory changes and production formation accelerates due to the development of sequential and conjugate reactions. With this feature, combined processes can significantly expand our understanding of the phenomena of the material world.

The implementation of the principle of combined technologies by the authors was carried out on many oxidized and mixed lead-zinc and copper ores of the republic. I consider the main achievement of this area of work to be that, thanks to a fundamentally new approach, it becomes possible to involve the largest deposits of polymetallic ores Shalkiya and Zhairem in economic turnover, which have not been developed for more than half a century due to the impossibility of their cost-effective processing by traditional methods.

I am pleased to note that for this work, Professor of the NAO "M. Auezov South Kazakhstan University" Viktor Shevko was awarded the Peter Kapitsa gold medal, and scientists of the RSE "National Center for Integrated Processing of Mineral Raw Materials of the Republic of Kazakhstan" Dosmurat Aitkulov and Alma Terlikbayeva were awarded silver medals by Peter Kapitsa.

The technologies developed by the authors for the complex processing of oxide and mixed copper ores with a combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical methods deserve special attention. They make it possible to extract copper from poor copper ores by chloride distillation, followed by the production of rough copper from sublimations, and ferroalloys of grades FS45 and FS50 from the cinder. The technology based on sulfuric acid leaching of copper oxide ores with subsequent extraction of copper from solution by the electrolytic method also makes it possible to obtain cathode copper. Ferrosilicon grades FS20-FS50 can be obtained from leaching tailings containing a large amount of silicon oxide.

The results of work in the field of metallurgy make it possible to transfer about 1 billion tons of copper and zinc ores to active reserves, increase the degree of integrated use of raw materials by 2.5-2.8 times and obtain up to 11.5 billion tenge of profit in the processing of zinc oxide ores. The hydrometallurgical technology created by the authors annually makes it possible to produce up to 50 thousand tons of cathode copper per year worth up to 350 million dollars.

New technologies are positively perceived by specialists. For example, in February of this year, on the basis of the RSE "National Center for Integrated Processing of Mineral Raw Materials of the Republic of Kazakhstan", a meeting of the KazNAEN Presidium was held with the participation of the Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan Beibut Atamkulov, who supported a fundamentally new technology for the joint production of ferrosilicon with zinc distillation from the ore of the Shalkiya deposit.

The technologies developed by the authors in the field of metallurgy are of international importance. In particular, for the countries with the largest proven reserves of copper - Chile, USA, Peru, India, Australia, Russia, China - and zinc - Russia, Australia, Canada, USA, China.

For zinc ores, for example, these can be deposits of Mississippi (USA), Sedmochislentsy (Bulgaria), Bytom, Olkush (Poland).

I would like to emphasize that in terms of the level of theoretical and applied results obtained and their implementation into the production cycle, the work has a world-class level in the field of mining and metallurgy. The work of scientists undoubtedly deserves to be awarded the Al-Farabi State Prize of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the field of science and technology in 2021.

Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper, August 11, 2021