Server: Microsoft-IIS/3.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 22:04:32 GMT Content-Type: text/html The Sweetwater Mill
 

The Sweetwater Mill








On June 24, 1992, Green Mountain Mining Venture concluded an agreement with Unocal for the purchase of the Sweetwater uranium mill. The mill is located in the Red Desert, 23 miles from the Green Mountain uranium properties, and is the newest uranium mill in the United States. Original construction costs for the 3 thousand tpd acid-leach uranium mill, tailings cell, and related facilities exceeded $45 million. In 1981 the mill processed as much as 4,200 tons of ore per day.
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Grinding of the ore is accomplished by an 18x6-foot semi-autogenous mill circuit, the output from which is fed into a series of ten 9 thousand cubic-foot rubber-lined leach tanks where acid and reagents are introduced into a mechanically agitated circuit.

The leached slurry is then pumped into a series of six 32-foot-diameter high capacity, rubber-lined counter-current decantation (CCD) thickeners. There, the uranium-bearing solution is separated and clarified from the solids, which are subsequently pumped to the tailings facility.
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The pregnant solution is pumped to a solvent extraction system, where the dissolved uranium is transferred from an aqueous phase to an organic phase, stripped and concentrated in a strong acid solution. Anhydrous ammonia is added to the uranium-rich solution to precipitate the uranium in the form of U3O8 (yellowcake), which is dried and packaged in steel drums for delivery.
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