Increasing the Efficiency and Environmental Safety of Technologies for Extracting Metals from Processing Tailings

One of the most problematic areas of metal extraction from tailings of metal-containing mineral pro-cessing is the complexity of mineral mining and processing tailings utilization without extracting metals and sulfur compounds from them. This is hampered by insufficient efficiency of their secondary pro-cessing technologies. The study utilized the following data from literary sources and patent documentation in the field of technologies and technical means for metal extraction from tailings of metal-containing mineral processing; laboratory and production experiments; physical modeling of metal extraction from tailings of metal-containing mineral processing; data array processing using statistical and probability theory methods, as well as mathematical modeling. The paper presents the main scientific and practical results of research and development of new technologies and technical means for metal extraction from ore processing tailings. Mechanochemical processes during ore enrichment tail-ings utilization into man-made voids and activation of useful ingredient extraction processes are de-scribed. It is shown that mechanic-chemical activation of enrichment tailings in a disintegrator increases metal extraction into solution by 10–25% during one processing cycle by two orders of magnitude faster than agitation leaching and can increase extraction during multiple processing. The use of activation of hardening backfill mixture components at mining enterprises leads to an increase in their activity for each apparatus by up to 10–40%. The conducted studies are a step towards creating a highly efficient technology for ore enrichment tailings utilization with the production of metals and hardening mixture components. The main advantages of the technology are the possibility of utilizing enrichment waste with a storage time of more than 10 years and obtaining metals in an amount of 20 to 60% of their content in the tailings. Mechanochemical activation during a single treatment increases metal ex-traction into solution by up to 25% compared to the base value and has a reserve for increase with an increase in processing cycles. Activation in a disintegrator without leaching increases the strength of the hardening mixture with the addition of cement from 1.30 to 1.52 MPa or by 17%. The mechanochemical technology is recommended for implementation at enterprises of the mining industries. The phenomenon of activation during processing in a disintegrator has been confirmed in related industries. The results of the research can be used in the extraction of metals from tailings of metal-containing minerals at mining and processing enterprises of Ukraine, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Kyrgyzstan and other developed mining countries of the world.