The Bulyanhulu gold mine positioned within the Kahama district of Tanzania is an operational underground mine.
The undertaking is part of Twiga Minerals, which is a three way partnership between Barrick Gold and the federal government of Tanzania.
The primary gold was poured in April 2001 and the lifetime of mine (LOM) is estimated to be as much as 2034.
The Bulyanhulu gold mine produced 180,000 ounces (oz) of gold in 2023.
Challenge location
Bulyanhulu gold mine is positioned in northwest Tanzania, inside the Kahama district of the Shinyanga area. It’s located 55km south of Lake Victoria and 150km southwest of town of Mwanza.
Geology and mineralisation
The Bulyanhulu mine lies within the shear-hosted quartz-veined deposit, which includes Archaean rock formations. It hosts mafic volcanic flows overlaid by a collection of pyroclastics and ash tuffs. Argillite is hosted between the mafic and felsic rocks current on the mine.
The mine consists of 5 totally different deposits – the Important, East and West zones and Reefs 0 and a couple of.
Bulyanhulu is a narrow-vein gold mine that incorporates mineralisation of gold, silver and copper in sulphides. The mineralisation at Bulyanhulu is related to steeply dipping argillite models generally known as Reefs.
Reserves
The Bulyanhulu gold mine is estimated to comprise confirmed and possible reserves of 18 million tonnes (Mt) grading 6.05g/t of gold (Ag) with 3.4 million ounces (Moz) in contained gold, as of December 2023.
Mining methodology at Bulyanhulu gold mine
The Bulyanhulu mine is managed as an underground trackless mining operation. It’s mined utilizing 4 mining strategies: longhole sublevel stoping, typical lower and fill stoping, mechanised drift and fill stoping, and alimak stoping.
The underground mine is accessible through a vertical shaft extending 1.1km all the way down to the 3940 degree, in addition to by means of an inner ramp system that begins from the floor and passes by means of a field lower.
The 2 important ore our bodies, Reef 1 and Reef 2, are being mined. Reef 1 Higher West is at present in progress, whereas excavation of Reef 2 Higher East is about to start in 2026 to entry increasing near-surface reserves.
Ore processing
The run-of-mine (ROM) ore is crushed in a major jaw crusher, adopted by a secondary cone crusher. The crushed ore is reclaimed from the stockpile utilizing vibrating feeders and is fed into the semi-autogenous grinding mill.
The first cyclone overflow is channelled to the rougher flotation cells. The rougher tailings are condensed and both relegated to the tailings storage facility or repurposed as underground paste backfill materials.
The rougher focus is forwarded to a Falcon concentrator for gravity-assisted gold restoration. The focus from the Falcon undergoes leaching in an intensive cyanide leach reactor. In the meantime, the tailings from the Falcon concentrator are recirculated to the regrind mill cyclone’s closed circuit for added grinding and classification earlier than advancing to the cleaner flotation circuit.
A GlyCat™ glycine leaching know-how by Draslovka, a chemical applied sciences, services and products firm, was built-in into the leaching circuit in February 2024. The know-how led to an 80% discount in cyanide consumption whereas reaching gold recoveries which are similar to conventional cyanidation.
The ICR tailings are rinsed earlier than being returned to the flotation cleansing circuit, and the focus is shipped to the electrowinning circuit, adopted by smelting to provide gold dore bars.
The cleansing circuit includes 4 phases, and within the ultimate stage, the focus is directed to the focus thickener. The cleaner scavenger tailings stream is fed to the carbon-in-leach plant for gold extraction to provide extra.
The focus thickener underflow is pumped to a Larox filter through a inventory focus storage tank to provide a cake with 8% to 10% moisture content material. The ultimate focus is loaded into containers.
Website infrastructure at Bulyanhulu gold mine
The Bulyanhulu mine is accessible through a non-public airport and native unpaved roads that connect with the principle freeway close to Kahama.
The electrical energy to the mine is provided by the Tanzania Electrical Provide Firm through a 220kv overhead grid community, which connects to the Shinyanga station.
Contractors concerned
Byrnecut was awarded the event contract at Bulyanhulu in February 2014, with a scope of works together with decline and lateral improvement, and haulage.
Capital, a distinguished mining companies firm, secured two contracts in November 2020. The preliminary contract includes a five-year laboratory companies settlement with MSALABS, an organization specialising in assay companies. MSALABS has an ongoing laboratory administration and evaluation service for the Bulyanhulu mine underneath the laboratory companies contract.
The following contract encompasses a two-year enterprise for underground grade management drilling. This contract additionally augments the underground fleet at Bulyanhulu to a complete of 4 rigs, incorporating two from the prevailing fleet and including two newly acquired underground rigs.