I echo Tony and Richard's feelings that we would all love to learn why gangue is being studied...
Here in America, some studies have been done as to the concept of a tailings dump being an historical artifact, and another study of the historical evidence left behind between "heads and tails" in ore processing.
-Russ Hartill
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Brewis <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Sep 8, 2010 11:00 am
Subject: Re: gangue
As has been pointed out, gangue in any instance is all those minerals in an
re body which do not form part of the final, saleable, concentrate.
Thus on the Marampa iron ore mine I worked at in Sierra Leone, an open-cast
ine where we were stripping layers off the top of a hill (so not really an
open pit")
he ore was hematite in a micaceous schist. This was treated in a gravity
eparation
lant which had over 900 Humphreys spirals. The ore entering the mill contained
rains of hematite, mica and quartz and the objective in the plant was to
eparate the former from the latter two. Thus, despite Keith Nichols' objections
o the term in this context (why is that, I wonder?), the mica and quartz were
n
hat case the gangue minerals, discarded to tailings dumps as waste.
Some years later, when working for a consultant and doing a feasibility study
or the establishment of a glass-making industry in Nigaragua, one of the
roposed raw materials was quartz. Sadly, the deposit where it was proposed to
uarry this also contained some limonite, etc, so in that instance the
ron-bearing
inerals would have been the gangue and the quartz the valuable one.
Having said that, I would like to echo Richard's comment: What I can't
nderstand
s why you are doing this? It would be interesting to know what the object of
he
xercise is.
Tony Brewis
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