At the beginning of November, the representative of DIAMO, Ing. Ladislav Pašek Ph.D., together with prof. Ing. Martin Sisol, PhD. from the TUKE FBERG Košice, visited two active mining complexes mining polymetallic Pb-Zn-Ag ores in the European-important Trepča ore belt in Kosovo. The first visit was the Kišnica flotation plant complex and the nearby Artana mine. The management of the complex together with the head director Ing. Hysni Beqirim took us on a tour of the flotation treatment plant built in the 1960s with an original capacity of 1 million tons of ore per year. Today, the line is modified and processes ores from the Artana mine, which is the only active mine in the Novo Brdo area with an annual production of approximately 50 kilotons of ore. The treatment plant includes two tailing ponds, while the already closed one stores over 12 million tons of flotation sludge with relatively interesting contents of residual ores. There are a total of 4 ore zones in the mining area of the Artana mine, while the balance Pb-Zn-Ag-Au mineralization contains only the 1st and 2nd ore zones. The 2nd ore zone itself, represented by cast sulfide ores with a thickness of about 3 meters, is mined at the level of the 5th floor by the outcrop method and, after extraction from the mine, is transported by trucks to the processing plant. The accessible ore zones are up to the 9th floor of the mine, however the mine is flooded below the 6th floor. However, according to the geologist present, they have enough reserves above water for 20 years with current mining.
Another mining complex was the Stan Terg mine, which opened the local Pb-Zn-Ag ore deposit up to the 12th floor below the surface. The mining itself is currently taking place below the 10th floor. The mine exploits the 3rd ore zone, and the visited 1st ore zone reaches an impressive thickness of about 12 meters of sulphide ores, in which there are a large number of cavities containing ore minerals in crystalline form. The very visit to the mine was a very aesthetic experience, mainly due to the color and shine of the mined raw material. The Stan Terg mine is interesting in that it completely changed the mining method below the 9th floor, which made it possible to reduce the need for personnel while ensuring mining of around 600 kilotons of ore per year. Rail mechanization was replaced by wheeled mechanization, which is represented by the most used Epiroc ST2 diesel transporter loaders today and mining trucks with a transport capacity of 15-20 tons. The ore is poured into the central storage tank and mined to the level of the 1st floor using a skip bin. Here, the ore is loaded onto wagons with a capacity of 10 tons and taken underground directly to the reservoirs of the adjacent Tuneli i Pare flotation treatment plant. The local treatment plant is from the same period and with a similar capacity as Kišnica. The flotation sludge is pumped back into the mine and used as a base for mined chambers.
After visiting the flotation treatment plant, we were received by a member of the supervisory board of the Trepča mining complex, Ing. Xhevdet Tahiri, to whom, in addition to the activities of DIAMO and FBERG TUKE, we also presented the EIT Raw Materials (EIT RM) project DYNOSORT, which aims at the efficient production of ore pre-concentrate using sensor sorting of mined ore. Sensor sorting fundamentally reduces the amount of tailings in the ore and, as a result, significantly saves energy costs during ore processing. In the EIT RM of the DYNOSORT project, the Bytíz pilot separation line is used, which is operated by o. z. SUL. Members of the consortium include the Polish company COMEX, the German research institute HZDR and the Technical University of Košice.
Apart from the active mining complexes, we also had the opportunity to visit the already closed surface mining of polymetallic ores Perroi Tharte and the decommissioned flotation treatment plant together with the tailings pond at the Artana mine. The polymetallic deposits of the Trepča ore belt in the territory of Kosovo, with their reserves of more than 20 million tons of ore, represent significant European potential raw material sources of base metals with accompanying mineralization of critical raw materials (e.g. gallium, germanium, REE and others) and will certainly be in the EU’s sights for ensuring the raw material security of the European continent. Trepča’s expressed interest in cooperation within the DYNOSORT project can thus be an opportunity for industrial verification of the optimization of the mining process, from which DIAMO can also benefit in the context of potential mining plans in the Czech Republic.
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