In the industrial tailings of Norilsk, RAS specialists discovered colored and noble metals. This discovery will help create environmentally friendly waste recycling technologies.
In the northern part of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, researchers have found that industrial waste from Norilsk contains components with a high content of copper, nickel and precious metals. The work was carried out by specialists from the Institute of Oil and Gas Geology and Geophysics named after. A. A. Trofimuk together with the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy named after. V. S. Soboleva.
The object of the study was a section of tailings formed after the processing of platinum-copper-nickel ores. Scientists conducted a mineralogical and geochemical analysis and confirmed the presence of copper, nickel, lead, gold, silver and platinum. It is especially important that valuable impurities are retained in sulfide compounds, which opens up opportunities for re-extraction of metals.
Experts also studied the chemical behavior of elements such as arsenic, aluminum, zinc, iron and thallium. Using thermodynamic models, they calculated how these substances pass into the liquid phase and what factors influence their mobility. This data will help not only in the development of processing technologies, but also in creating solutions to reduce the environmental burden on the region.
The results of the study will become the basis for new schemes for the extraction of useful components and the rational use of man-made objects. The project is being implemented within the framework of fundamental scientific work FWZZ-2022-0029.
Similar initiatives are actively developing in other regions of Russia. For example, UrFU scientists have already presented a method for separating gold from waste with low metal content. The new approach is focused on processing refractory concentrates and tailings, where precious components are distributed at the micro- and nanoscale and are not extracted by traditional methods.
Research in Norilsk shows that even industrial tailings can become a source of rare and valuable metals. For the region, this is a chance to reduce the environmental load and at the same time obtain new resources for industry.
The material was prepared with the support of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science as part of the Decade of Science and Technology.
Source: @dprom
