4. Mineralurgy

4.1 General principles

• Case of stibine-dominant deposits

  When stibine is the dominant mineral, mining concentrates are obtained using gravity techniques, possibly supplemented by flotation.

  As far as gravity techniques are concerned, because of stibine's fragility, "brutal" techniques such as the dense liquid technique are avoided, in order to prevent the formation of too many fine particles. Instead, "gentler" techniques such as spiral, Reichert cone or shaking table treatments are preferred. The resulting gravity concentrates contain 35-45% Sb.

  Manual sorting is not ruled out in cases where the raw ores are rich in stibine and mineralization is very coarse, especially if labor costs...