Photo by: Duane Daws
State minerals research enterprise Mintek last week demonstrated its Reflaut tailings treatment process to Mining Weekly at Gold Fields’ South Deep mine, west of Johannesburg. Reflaut, which stands for Retreatment Flowsheet for Gold (au) and Uranium Tailings, removes gold as well as harmful sulphites and radioactive uranium from tailings, significantly reducing the mineral content responsible for generating acid mine drainage. The demonstration plant, which has been running at South Deep since last month, has retreatment capacity of about 200 kg an hour. About 2 g of gold is produced at South Deep for every ton of tailings retreated.