Bornuur site is located in Tuv aimag120km to the north of Ulaanbaatar, the Capital City of Mongolia. It has primary gold mining and processing as the main activity for Artisanal and small scale miners. The mining is done in Sujigtei Mountain through the establishment of a multi party MOU between, (Centerra Gold, Concession owner, The Ministry of Mineral Resources, SDC, the Bornuur local government and the Bornuur Miners Association) in which the Miners Association has been granted land rights by Centeraa gold to carry out mining activities. The gold ore is processed at the Bornuur Gold Processing plant using mercury free gold processing technologies. A total of 65 partnerships (196 miners) are registered with the Bornuur mining association of which 100 miners are currently working in Sujigtei and supply approximately 3 tons of gold ore to the plant on a daily basis producing 100 grams of gold. The mercury free ore processing plant provides milling services for miners from other aimags such as Omni Gobi, don Gobi, bayankhongkor, Selenge and Bulgan. Please download: detailed information.

Jargalant a wet placer artisanal mining site is situated in Batraq soum, 244km north of Bayankhongor. There are 44 registered partnerships with approximately 300 miners. During summer, the numbers increase up to 500 as students join their parents to work for their tuition fees. The site concession area borders with JUMP mining (junior mining) concession to the south. Please download: detailed report on introduction.

The plant uses mercury free technology to recover gold. The gold recovery circuit has been tested under local conditions and recommended as successful. Download

Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) Division was newly established within the Mining Department of MRPAM. The division staff members closely cooperate with the SAM project team and other project stakeholders within its main objectives:

• support the establishment of an transparent and straight-forward regulatory framework for the ASM sector;
• formation of institutional structures and organizations within the ASM sector encouraged and supported;
• Skills and know how to Artisanal miners and other stakeholders transferred in support of better performing and safer operations and
• Knowledge base for the integrated natural resource management and rural development established.

After Bornuur plant there was an identified need to build a much smaller plant with less complex machines to suit local conditions. It was also needful to have a plant where the project has full control and can build up models to suit Mongolia ASM in project aspects of institutional, community development, technical and environmental. According to the ASM temporary regulations miners should send their ores to centralized processing centers and for Mandal it means they have to send ore to Bornuur which is 70km away increasing transport costs. Mandal offered a good opportunity to address the above needs. Please download: more information.

For alluvial mining (in Jargalant soum, Bayankhongor aimag), appropriate equipment to suite and improve recovery were designed and fabricated locally. These included simple and easy to work with sluices, screens and riffles (to catch coarse gold). Carpets were identified on the local market and introduced to the miners as well as buckets for secondary concentration. Previously the miners would process their concentrate in an open circuit thereby losing some of the gold back to the stream, but use of buckets creates a closed circuit where reprocessing can recover the lost gold. The sluices were tested on the miner’s tailings with an inproved recovery of 10% and doubled throughput. Miners were trained on the use of the new sluices. Please download: a report on testwork.

A visit to assess the technology used in Builsan was undertaken and the project would like to highlight the innovative thinking of the ASMers in dry processing for duplicating the Keene dry sluice using local material and be able to achieve economic gold recoveries. The dry washer is a good piece of equipment which needs some miner improvements. The dry washing has limitations that fine gold is blown away with the fine dust. There is lost of dust released to the working environment and this creates an occupational hazard. Please download more information. 

SAM Project in cooperation with HAMO company is successfully running a pilot gold ore processing plant in Bornuur soum of Tov aimag. The plant uses mercury free technology to recover gold. The gold recovery circuit has been tested under local conditions and recommended as successful. Download its operational information and safety instructions.

The testing plant is installed with jaw crusher, local roller mill for comminution. The primary gold recovery is achieved by a locally fabricated sluice with various caperts which include a vinyl loop, riffled carpet both locally available and a brazilian wollen carpet.The primary concentration equipment include a Chinese shaking table, and iCon (centrifugal concentrator). Secondary concentration without to recover gold without use of mercury is done by use of Holman shaking table and the results have been successful. The test is being done by more applicable, simple, and improved gravitation method that is free of any chemicals e.g. mercury and cyanide. The test is intended for identification of environmentally friendly processing practice that is the most applicable for ore processing in Bornuur area and test ores from other areas in Mongolia.It is alos intended to provide a small scale mineral processing model that can be adopted throughout Mongolia in the future. Future activities will involve installation of hammer mill, different carpet tests, perfomance comparison of different gravity recovery equipment and intevention on the mining sites on mining techniques, equipment and safety and equipment.sociation in the Soum. Please download a detailed report.