Adding Value to Mine Waste through Recovery Au, Sb, and As: The Case of Auriferous Tailings in the Iron Quadrangle, Brazil

From the colonial era to modern times, gold mining has played a crucial role in shaping Brazil’s economy, culture, and landscape, particularly Iron Quadrangle region. Therefore, resulting waste accumulated tailings structures, either from deactivated circuits or plants still production. The present study reveals potential assessed based on set of metallurgical tests, assuming specific scenarios depending occurrence modes interesting economic elements. For Au, calcination, leaching, flotation are promising techniques recover this element. Tests indicated that toxic elements such as Sb As could be effectively reused form glass. generation other products dry cleaning was not effective but since there an enrichment with Fe, Al, K fractions.