Pampalo processing plant
The processing removes unusable minerals from the ore
Our processing plant is centrally located in Pampalo, next to our underground mine. This means that ore from the mines does not have to be transported long distances, and we can keep transport costs and environmental impact to a minimum.
At the processing plant, the ore is separated from the raw material transported from the mine, to remove the unwanted minerals, the resins, leaving valuable minerals as the output of the processing. The process used is flotation.
In flotation, the material to be processed is mixed with water. The mixture is pumped into flotation cells. The cells are equipped with a mixing-stator combination. Compressed air is passed through the stator to form a foam mat on the surface of the cell. As the liquid foams, the desired minerals rise to the surface of the foam due to its hydrophobicity. The foam is recovered and the final product is a flotation concentrate from which the minerals in the ore that are unsuitable for recovery have been removed. Finally, the flotation concentrate is filtered and forwarded for further processing.
Our mining operations are focused on the Karelian Gold Line
The cornerstone of our business is the gold production in the Pampalo region and the surrounding gold deposits on the Karelian Gold Line, which runs through the municipality of Ilomants in North Karelia. The zone is over 40 kilometres long and mostly five kilometres wide gold-bearing greenstone belt.
Mining operationsThe operation of the processing plant is divided into three phases
1. Crushing and grinding
The ore is crushed using a two-stage crushing process. The ore is then ground to the desired particle size by two ball mills through classification (=cycloning).
2. Processing: flotation, gravity separation
The ore is concentrated from the slurry by flotation. Using a combination of agglomerating and flotation chemicals, it is converted into bulk concentrate. If necessary, gravity separation can be used as an additional treatment to obtain high-content concentrate.
3. Water removal
The flotation concentrate is thickened and filtered, allowing it to be loaded into trucks for further processing. The The tailings are pumped to the tailings pools. After clarification, the water is reused in the process.