In October last year, at the grinding section of the gold recovery plant of the Angren Mining Administration, new equipment was put into operation - Falcon SB centrifugal concentrators with periodic unloading. For what purpose is it established? What advantages does it have? To answer these and other questions, I visited gold recovery plant.

Who, if not the leader, will thoroughly tell about this? Therefore, Azamjon Khaydarov, the head of the gold recovery plant of AMA, Candidate of Technical Sciences, brought me up to date.

- From the start of our factory until the early 2000s, gravity separation was used - a process and technology for mineral processing based on the use of gravity, in which minerals are separated from waste rock due to the difference in their density and particle size. This is one of the oldest methods of enrichment, used two thousand years BC. One of the first scientific substantiations of this method was given by M. Lomonosov.

But even today it does not lose its relevance due to its advantages - low cost and the ability to separate mineral particles of a wide range of sizes (from 0.1 to 300 mm) using different methods. It is the main method of beneficiation of coal, shale, gold, ferrous ores, rare metals, phosphates, diamonds, other non-metallic minerals, etc.

In recent years, great progress has been made in the technology of gravity concentration of gold ore raw materials. This is manifested, first of all, in the creation of new devices capable of extracting not only large, but also very small particles of metallic gold, which are released during the grinding of ore. These include, in particular, centrifugal concentrators, which were purchased for us last year and which are the state of the art in gravity technology. "Falcon SB-1350" "Falcon SB-2500" are installed on two lines of the gold recovery plant grinding section. Their installation was carried out by specialists from AMMC – TOMK, Production Automation Dept., Angren Mining Administration, as well as from Russia, Kazakhstan and Canada.

This equipment has a number of advantages: high productivity, higher and more efficient recovery of very fine gold particles, variable frequency drive and dynamic braking system significantly reduce downtime when washing off the concentrate, the equipment utilization rate is over 95% at low operating costs. Fully automated, one-touch control ensures minimum downtime and maximum concentrate safety.

In the four months that have passed since the commissioning of centrifugal concentrators, we have achieved certain success: gold recovery has increased by 1.0-1.5%. For example, this figure for January amounted to more than 93.0% against the plan of 92.0%.

On the day of my arrival at the mill, Lazizkhon Inoyatov worked at the milling site and told me about how he maintains the new equipment.

- I have been working as a skimmer at the gold recovery plant for 9 years. I know the equipment well. Therefore, among other workers, I was taught to work on centrifugal concentrators by the senior foremen of the gold recovery plant, Bunyod Tursunkulov and Sherzod Botirov. At this time, we control the conduct of two production processes: screening and concentration. Our main task is to obtain a concentrate with a high content of the first metal. I want to note that the new equipment is automated, so it is easy to manage.

Well, centrifugal concentrators have already proven themselves on the positive side, the equipment is operating normally, and specialists are currently making calculations.