Recent trends in research and development work on the processing of uranium ore in South Africa

The rapid increases in the price of gold and uranium in recent years have coincided with an unprecedented increase in working costs at South African gold mines. A re-examination of the existing flowsheets for the recovery of uranium, gold, and pyrite from Witwatersrand ores, in the light of these economic trends, has resulted in the identification of a number of profitable areas for research and development. The main topics under investigation in South Africa in the processing of uranium ore are the use of physical methods of concentration such as flotation, gravity concentration, and wet high-intensity magnetic separation; the wider adoption of the 'reverse leach', in which prior acid leaching for uranium improves the subsequent extraction of gold; the use of higher leaching temperatures and higher concentrations of ferric ion in the leach to increase the percentage of uranium extracted, including the production of ferric ion from recycled solutions; the application of pressure leaching to the recovery of uranium from low-grade ores and concentrates; the development of a continuous ion-exchange contactor capable of handling dilute slurries, so that simpler and cheaper techniques of solid-liquid separation can be used instead of the expensive filtration and clarification steps, and the improvement of instrumentation for the control of additions of sulphuric acid and manganese dioxide to the leach. A brief description is given of the essential features of the new or improved processing techniques under development that hold promise of full-scale application at existing or future uranium plants