Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (Ghana) Ltd. - Obuasi, Ghana, West Africa

The Ashanti mine is located in the Gold Coast region of West Africa in Ghana, where gold is found over a wide area of about 105,000 sq km (40,000 sq miles). Ashanti has been the most productive of all the lode mines and has been one of the world's notable gold producers for over 50 years. The mine is located at Obuasi, 113 km (70 miles) north and east of Tarkwa, which is 80 km (50 miles) inland from the coast. The Ashanti lode is worked on 300 m (1,000 ft) of strike length over a width of 12 m (40 ft), and by 1934 it had attained a depth of 700 m (2, 300 ft). The lode is in pre-Cambrian granite intruding a system- of shists, phyllites, etc., containing fragments of the wall rock with quartz, carbonates, sericite and small amounts of pyrite, arsenopyrite, sphalerite, galena, and gold. The shattered quartz fractures carry sulfides and gold, most of which are invisible. (William Harvey Emmons, "Gold Deposits of the World," McGraw -Hill, 1937.) Because the mill treats an ore composed of refractory sulfides - chiefly arsenopyrite and fine free gold - the flowsheet reflects the complex ore characteristics. Plane tables are used in the grinding, circuit for free gold recovery. After roasting the sulfide flotation concentrates, additional free gold is recovered from the calcines with a rotary belt concentrator and the two concentrates are combined for feed to the amalgamation pans, with the resulting gold amalgam being retorted. Following four-stage crushing to minus 9. 5 mm (318 in.) with two stages of grinding, the cyclone overflow is floated for sulfide recovery. The flotation concentrate is roasted with the calcine reground and roughly cyanided to scalp out the gold readily dissolved in one of two cyanidation circuits. The cyanide residue joins the thickened flotation tailing for cyanidation in a complete CCD circuit using filters. The gold precipitates are calcined before melting in pot-type furnaces. The tonnage to the mill of 3,175 mtpd (3,500 s tpd) with a content of over 14.7 g per mt (0.43 oz per st) places the Ashanti production as one of the top producers in the world; and with its past long life, the total production rates it as one of the world's great mines.