Petropavlovsk is one of the largest gold producers in Russia with assets located in the Amur region, in the far east of Russia. The company has four mines, namely Pokrovskiy, Pioneer, Malomir and Albyn. Today a significant amount of Petropavlovsks resources and reserves is classified as refractory. Petropavlovsk developed the pressure oxidation POX Hub at Pokrovskiy mine, which had reached the end of its operational life. To support the pressure oxidation project development and secure a successful project implementation, Petropavlovsk built a state-of-the-art R&D center (SRC Hydrometallurgy) in St Petersburg in 2008 and a continuous POX pilot plant was completed in Blagoveshchensk in 2011. The extensive batch test campaigns were conducted by Petropavlovsk to find the optimal process conditions and the pressure oxidation flowsheet for different ore types. A detailed mathematical model of the pressure oxidation process was developed by SRC Hydrometallurgy to facilitate the optimal pressure oxidation design. Process performance was confirmed, and the model was validated with pilot scale experiments on Blagoveshchensk pilot plant. The data generated by Petropavlovsk formed a solid basis for the scale-up and plant design. Basic and detail engineering for the Pokrovskiy pressure oxidation circuit and for the Malomir and Pioneer flotation circuits was done by Outotec. Besides the engineering, Outotec supplied all major equipment for Pokrovskiy POX Hub and Malomir concentrator plant. Construction was managed by Petropavlovsk and Outotec provided the installation and commissioning services. Petropavlovsk has successfully developed the Pokrovskiy POX Hub to commercial production in partnership with Outotec. The systematic approach to research and project development, from laboratory to the commercial operation, is described. This includes all major stages from the early stage technology evaluation to the start-up of the Pokrovskiy POX plant. The predicted versus the actual plant performance is also presented and discussed in detail.
CITATION:Zaytsev, P, Shneerson, Y, Fedorov, V, Zavaliuev, A, Kudrin, E, Afanasiev, A, Karjalainen, T, Lillkung, K and Ha, T, 2019. Pokrovskiy pressure oxidation (POX) hub from laboratory to commercial production, in Proceedings World Gold 2019, pp 504518 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).