A method for extracting valuable minerals and/or precipus metals from oil sands ore bodies or only the valuable minerals and/or precious metals from other related ore bodies containing little or no hydrocarbons, but similar to oil sands ore bodies when the overburden material and/or the interburden material containing clay/fines lenses have common geological mineralization of aluminum values with iron, titanium and possible precious metals, comprising the steps of:
- a. developing a mine plan for selective mining of said oil sands ore bodies or said other related ore bodies to improve the precision of ore acquisition;
- b. procuring by said selective mining oil sands ore with a cut-off grade greater than two to six weight percent of hydrocarbons hereinafter called oil sands ore, procuring overburden material and interburden clay/fines lenses containing less than two to six weight percent hydrocarbons or no hydrocarbons hereinafter called mineral ores, and procuring other ores related geologically to said oil sands ores, but containing little or no hydrocarbons hereinafter called other related ores;
- c. crushing said oil sands ore containing said valuable minerals and/or precious metals after removing oversize material, rock and waste, hereinafter called rejects, to yield a coarse sands stream of particles of a maximum size required for processing;
- d. crushing and grinding said other related ores and/or said mineral ores hereinafter called ground mineral ores containing valuable minerals and precious metals after removing the rejects to yield a stream of particles of a maximum size required for processing;
- e. alternatively, combining said crushing step with said crushing and grinding step for ores having suitable geological mineralization;
- f. extracting the hydrocarbons, if said oil sands ore contains greater than two to six weight percent hydrocarbons in a hydrocarbon extraction means, to produce a coarse sands fraction and a fines fraction both containing valuable minerals and precious metals;
- g. transferring said ground mineral ores to either a fines drying means or to the agglomerating section of the agglomerating, curing and leaching means;
- h. transferring said coarse sands fraction, if any, to a precious metals flotation means to float said precious metals layer and any hydrocarbons layers removing said layers as a precious metals and water stream and a hydrocarbons and water stream;
- i. transferring said coarse sands fraction less said precious metals and said hydrocarbons to a heavy metals removal means for removal of heavy metals where said coarse sands stream and said heavy metals is dewatered and stockpiled or returned to the mine as damp clean coarse sands for backfill;
- j. drying said fines fraction and drying said ground mineral ores stream from said crushing and grinding means, if said ground mineral ores stream requires drying, and transferring said fines fractions, and the ground mineral ores stream to said agglomerating, curing and leaching means;
- k. mixing said fines, if any, and said ground mineral ores with said heavy metals stream, if any in said agglomerating, curing and leaching means;
- l. agglomerating all of said fines, said ground mineral ores and said heavy metal streams with concentrated sulphuric acid to form an agglomerated material, curing the agglomerated material with steam, air drying if required and leaching said agglomerated material;
- m. recycling water as a leaching agent between the leaching section of said agglomerating, curing and leaching means and the sulphuric acid leach liquor crystal production and removal means such that said circulated water becomes the sulphuric acid leach mother liquor containing the valuable minerals;
- n. processing said sulphuric acid leach mother liquor in a sulphuric acid leach liquor crystal production and removal means to produce aluminum sulphate crystals, ferric/ferrous sulphate crystals and titanyl sulphate crystals, if needed, while recycling the raffinate;
- o. converting said aluminum sulphate crystals to cell grade alumina product in the alumina production means;
- p. converting said ferric/ferrous sulphate crystals to ferric oxide crystals;
- g. converting said ferric oxide crystals to iron products in the form of powder, pellets or plates;
- r. converting said titanyl sulphate crystals to titanium dioxide pigment or titanium sponge metal;
- s. washing said agglomerated material with water after valuable minerals extraction and neutralizing with lime;
- t. leaching with sodium cyanide and water with air injection into the leach liquor to remove said previous metals from the neutralized substantially mineral free said agglomerated material to produce the precious metals leach mother liquor, said precious metals leach mother liquor is then transferred to a precious metals production means, said precious metals leach mother liquor is treated to produce precious metals such as gold and/or silver while recycling the raffinate liquor;
- u. circulating neutralizing liquor before the remaining spent neutralized said agglomerated material is removed for transportation to backfill storage or the mine;
- and
- v. using the heat and sulphur containing gases generated in said valuable metals production means in the SO.sub.2 recovery and H.sub.2 SO.sub.4 production means to recycle the sulphuric compounds in the process and furnish heat to the cogeneration means for process steam and electricity production.