Beneficiation of Synthetic Iron Ore Kaolinite Mixture Using Selective Flocculation
- 1 R&D, Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.
- 2 Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research,Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India.
- 3 R&D, Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.
Abstract
High demand of steel necessitates the use of low and lean grade iron ores by beneficiating them. However the fines, slimes and tailings generated in the process of beneficiating these low grade iron ores contains good amount of iron values. These iron values can be recovered by further beneficiating the fines, slimes and tailing by selective flocculation, which is defined as the selective agglomeration of iron ore particles using flocculant. In the present study an attempt has been taken to study the applicability of selective flocculation to Indian iron ore using corn starch as flocculant. A detail mineralogical and chemical characterization of iron ore and kaolinite were performed; in addition to this the flocculant was characterized by FTIR which gives an idea about the functional groups present in the flocculant. Different experiments were performed to optimize the operating parameters of the selective flocculation process. It was observed that product grade and recovery was strongly affected by pH of slurry and solid concentration compared to the flocculant dose. It was also found that the iron value can be upgraded to 63-66.9 % from the feed iron value of 37.65-55.33 % with the recovery of 63-90 %.
- Attia, Y.A., 1977, “Development of a selective flocculation process for a complex copper ore”. International Journal of Mineral Processing, vol.4, pp.209-225.
- Pradip and Moudgil,B.M.,1991,“Selective flocculation of tribasic calcium Phosphate from mixtures with quartz using polyacrylic acid flocculant”. International Journal of Mineral Processing, vol.32, pp. 271-281.
- Sresty, G.C. and Somasundaran, P, 1980,“Selective Flocculation of Synthetic Mineral Mixtures using modified polymers”. International Journal of Mineral Processing, vol.6, pp. 303-320.
- Friend, J. P. and Kitchener, J. A., 1973, “ Some physico-chemical aspects of the separation minerals by selective flocculation of finely-divided minerals by selective flocculation”, Chemical Engineering Science, vol-28, pp. 1071- 1080.
- Mandre, N.R. and Panigrahi, D., 1997, “Studies on selective flocculation of complex sulphides using cellulose xanthate”. International Journal of Mineral Processing.,vol-50, pp-177-186.
- Weisseborn, P.K., Warren, L.J., Dunn, J.G., 1994, “Selective flocculation of ultra fine iron ore.1.Mechanisim of adsorption of starch into hematite”.Colloids and Surfaces, voL-99, pp 11-27.
- Weisseborn, P.K., 1996, “Behavior of amylopectin and amylose components of starch in the selective flocculation of ultrafine iron ore”. International Journal of Mineral Processing , 47, pp 197-211.
- Rao, K. Hanumantha. and Narasimhan, K.S., 1984, “Selective Flocculation Applied to Barsuan Iron Ore Tailings”. International Journal of Mineral Processing, vol - 14 pp. 67- 75.
- Rao,K. Hanumantha, Nayak, K.R., Mahapatra, S.N., Narasimhan, K.S.,1985,“Selective flocculation for the recovery of iron in Kudremukh tailings”. Mining Engineering., vol - 37, pp. 1312-1315.
- Tejeda Ramos., M.M., Ontiveros, A., Viota, J.L and Duran, J.D.G., J., 2003, “Interfacial and rheological properties of humic acid/hematite suspensions”. Colloid Interface Science, 268, pp. 85–95.