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By T. Surkova

For the moment reserves of high-grade ores are practically depleted requiring ever-increased involvement of low assay raw materials, such as black-shale ores, in industrial operations. Black-shale ores are constituted of minerals containing such valuable components as vanadium, uranium, molybdenum, manganese, and rare-earth elements (REE). We studied technogenic solutions of black-shale ores processing, after uranium, molybdenum, and vanadium were recovered. Mentioned solutions contain rare-earth elements in substantial quantities (S REE 70-100 mg/dm3) that is very important factor taking into consideration the world demand ever-increasing last years. Higher concentrations of iron and aluminum inhibiting REE sorption and extraction recovery are found in solutions. We propose a method of hydrolytic deposition to cleaning solutions from impurity elements (Fe, Al). Study of hydrolytic deposition kinetics allowed identifying optimal conditions to run this process. Rare-earth elements may be recovered from purified solutions through sorption process followed by their further deposition from eluates in form of concentrates. Keywords: black-shale ores, rare-earth elements, a method of hydrolytic deposition, impurity elements, sorption

Sep 1, 2012

By Ljudmil S. Grigorov, Eric Forssberg, Hanumantha Rao Kota, Robert J. Pugh, Lidia B. Alexandrova

"We have used the microscopic thin balance developed by Scheludko at al. (1970) technique to study the stability and interactions within the thin film between the silica surface and air bubble with (i) a long chain C10 amine and (ii) a cationic/anionic surfactant systems consisting of mixtures of a long straight C10 chain amine with long straight chain C8, C10 and C12 sulfonates. It was found that the mixed surfactants caused lower contact angles, lower rates of the thin aqueous film rupture and longer film lifetime, compared to the pure amine system.This behavior was explained by the initial strong adsorption of positively charged interfacial complexes from the mixed surfactant system at the air/solution interface followed by adsorption at the silica interface. It was also shown that the chain length compatibility between the anionic and cationic surfactants controls the strength of the interfacial complex, determining an inhibition in the thin film rupture and dewetting of the film. The rupture mechanism was explained by an earlier established heterocoagulation mechanism between the positively charged air/solution interface and the solution/silica interface which remained negatively charged. The formation of the interfacial complex at the air/solution interface was confirmed by using surface tension data."

Jan 1, 2003

By Vishal Shukla, Ashok Kumar, C. Raghu Kumar, D. P. Chakraborty

"Traditional iron ore beneficiation plants using washing, screening, and jigging processes require large volumes of process water. Generated slime during processing, its disposal and impact on water usage, is an important concern for any mining company. The challenge today, during extracting iron ore, is how to dispose of slime such that it is contained and stable, while maximizing water reuse and minimizing surface footprint. The slime disposal methods are sensitive to the environment. Two major technologies presently being practiced for disposing the slime across the world are pressure filtration and paste thickening. In this perspective an attempt has been made to do comparative study between paste thickening and pressure filtration for selection of suitable slime disposable technology for Noamundi processing plant, Tata Steel. From the studies, it is evident that by adopting pressure filtration technique it was possible to produce filtered slime, whereas filtration, rate reduces significantly with the presence of finer fraction. Further , the greatest advantage of paste thickening is volume reduction of slime. By considering the technology limitation and comparative lab test work result, it is opined that combination of filtration and paste thickening technology is favorable in terms of capital and operating cost and slime >45 µ should be filtered and < 45 µ slime should go for paste thickening. The study and the results are presented in details.INTRODUCTION The beneficiation processes always end up with an enriched portion of desired mineral - “Concentrate” and an enriched portion of undesired minerals - “Tailing”. The proportion and nature of tailings generated in every beneficiation process differ from ore to ore and reflects the characteristics of the feed processed. The traditional method of tailing disposal in many mineral processing industries has been to dispose them as thickener underflow at around 35% solids. Though, it had certain advantages of transportation with ease but contribute to a greater volume occupied in the tailing dam. This sustained practice and failure to utilize the space available in the tailing dam judiciously endangered the mining industry. The tailing management has become the toughest task to the mining industry and most of the mines are running out of space for disposing the fresh tailings as many of these are at the verge of getting filled."

Jan 1, 2018

By Francisco Cubillos, Jorge Menacho, Cesar Gomez, Juan Rodríguez

Mineral flotation is the most used process to selectively separate particles of one or more minerals of interest. The process uses natural or induced hydrophobicity to collect particles on the surface of rising bubbles through collisions and formation of bubble-particle aggregates. Flotation machines must keep particles in suspension and well distributed, while at the same time, disperse a mass of air into a population of small bubbles. The efficiency of the separation depends primarily on the characteristics of the bubble population generated in the machine and its distribution and flow throughout its volume. The formation and separation of bubble-particle aggregates create two zones, with strong interactions between them, and with markedly different hydrodynamics conditions. A model describing two-phase hydrodynamics of the continuous and dispersed phases (frother solutions and bubbles, respectively), moving along the whole unit, is proposed. Bubble populations are characterized at the formation stage including the effect of the presence of frothers. Flow through the aggregates formation zone, where bubbles move freely and are closely spherical, is modeled using drift-flux analysis. In the aggregates separation zone, bubbles initially pack maintaining a water layer thick enough to prevent capillary forces to affect their shape. As water drainage proceeds, bubbles deform, capillary channels form, and a network of channels with a diameter size distribution develops; channels become narrower (permeability is reduced) as the distance from the interface increases. Froth hydrodynamics is characterized using models originally developed to describe unsaturated flow through porous solid particle beds. Effects of hydrostatic pressure are considered.

Jan 1, 2014

By Ata Akcil, Z. B. Karshigina, Ye. G. Bochevskaya, E. A. Sargelova, Z. S. Abisheva

Phosphorus slag is one of the most large-tonnage of yellow phosphorus production waste, which for decades stored in the slag disposal, by polluting the environment and creating environmental problems in the regions. Phosphorus slags from the processing of Karatau phosphorites are a very promising source of raw materials not only for silicon compounds but also rare earth metals (REM). Among the REM, yttrium, neodymium, europium and lutetium predominate, which are relevant to high-tech industries. The report presents technological scheme of complex processing of slags of phosphoric production with obtaining of REM concentrate and precipitated silicon dioxide ("white soot"). The regime parameters of the main operations of the technology are determined: I stage- leaching of slag with nitric acid solution; extraction of the REM-containing solution with tributyl phosphate and stripping of the REM with water; settling of solution of salts of oxalic acid, calcining the precipitate to obtain a concentrate S REM oxides and II stage of leaching silicon cake to obtain "white soot". Recovery of S REM from slags of phosphoric production on various redistribution has made, %: leaching – 95.0; extraction - 90.2; extraction on the average ~ 93.2; the production of a concentrate of REM oxide is 93.9. A concentrate containing 17.3 % of REM oxides was obtained. According to X-ray analysis it contains the following phases: calcium oxide, portlandite2, gadolinium oxide and yttrium, gadolinium oxide, gadolinium oxide and cerium, neodymium oxide, neodymium oxide and cerium. Thus, the concentrate can serve as a raw material for the production of individual rare-earth metals like gadolinium, cerium, yttrium and neodymium. After performing the II stage of leaching siliceous cake with nitric acid the samples of "white soot" were obtained. Its chemical composition corresponds to the state standard and has a specific surface area equal to 180 - 200 m2/g. The technology has been tested in a large-scale laboratory scale and will solve the problem of complex processing of phosphorus raw materials and import substitution in Kazakhstan. The end-to-end recovery of S REM oxides and silicon into concentrate and product from their initial content in slags is ~ 75.0 and 98.0 %, respectively.

Jan 1, 2018

By l. Bokányi

The Tóth adsorption isotherm-model was derived and has been widely used for the inhomogeneous solid surfaces. The three-parameter isotherm incorporates the effect of the interaction between the adsorbed substances as well. All classic isotherms can be clearly derived from this one. Bio sorption is the sequestering of dissolved components, i.e. metals from aqueous environment by living or dead biomass. The mechanism of the bio sorption is rather complex and predominantly refers to the affinity of the chemical functional groups: acetoamido groups of chitin, structural polysaccharides, amino and phosphate groups in nucleic acids, amino, amido sulfhydryl and carboxyl groups in proteins, hydroxyls in polysaccharides, sulphates, etc. towards the soluted substances, i.e. heavy metal ions. The physisorption, as well as the micro precipitation also play a role in the bio sorption mechanism. The description of such a complex process can be done by a model reflecting this complexity. According to our experimental results obtained using algae and immobilised algae for the sorption of heavy metal cations, the most appropriate model for such a description is the Tóth-isotherm, the parameters of which can be interpreted. Flotation process is also a very complex one, the overall result of which depends on the partial results of many micro processes and parameters. The particle interaction which very often takes place in the flotation systems makes the phenomenon even more complex. The flotation kinetic model with particle interaction was already introduced by author in 1994 and further developed in 2000. In this paper based on the experimental results obtained with metallic particles in case of recycling flotation the applicability of the Tóth-equation as an alternative flotation kinetic model for the systems with particle interaction is proved. The applicability of Tóth-model in mineral processing demonstrates again its universal character and the great talent of the late József Tóth, great Hungarian chemist. Keywords : Toth isotherm, biosorption, Langmuir, Freundlich

Sep 1, 2012

By R. B. Shu

A moderate thermophilic microorganisms, has been isolated (45?) from a typical sulphide mine in the region of Mo Jiang located in the southwest of China. The culture has been used to extract copper from chalcopyrite concentrates obtained from De Xing copper mine. The majority of experiments were carried out in 300mL Erlenmeyer flasks containing 150mL volumes of mineral suspension. Effects of some variable parameters such as solids concentration, pH and the concentrations of inorganic nutrients on the bioleaching of chalcopyrite obtained from De Xing copper mine were investigated. For a given concentrate the most important factor affecting the fractional copper extraction was the size of the mineral particles. The overall rate of leaching was found to be limited by the area of mineral surface. The attack started in cracks and genetic defects and finally reached the whole chalcopyrite surface. As a consequence of this, the ore showed strongly cracks. The additive of ferrous sulfate increases the bacteria activity, but did not improve chalcopyrite bioleaching. The results indicate that the nature and relative proportions of the various minerals present have been shown to be important factors.

Jan 1, 2014

By Volker Vogt, Wolfgang Sand, Eberhard Gock

"It was discovered that the selective activity of bacteria during the extraction of raw material concentrates by means of flotation could also be achieved with extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) excreted by bacteria. EPS, which is extracted by means of centrifuging bacterial cultures, can help to significantly reduce the use of cyanides, approximately 200,000 t/a of which are used for ore dressing today.The bacterium used was Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans. In order to identify the bandwidth of the oxidation activity, 20 bacterial strains of the strain collection of the University of Hamburg were attracted to iron(II) sulfate and pyrite under defined conditions. All strains oxidized iron(II) sulfate ten times faster than pyrite.EPS has so far been derived from four strains. In general, EPS extracts are divided into a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic fraction. The hydrophilic fraction is composed of e.g. fucose, rhamnose and glucose; fatty acids such as dodecanoic acid, hexadecanoic acid, octadecanoic acid and nonadecanoic acid were found in the hydrophobic fraction.Pure mineral phases and mineral mixtures were used for the flotation tests. As opposed to current knowledge, the results were reproducible with technical flotation machines."

Jan 1, 2003

By X. Q. Cao

As the second largest phosphate resource in the world, Chinese phosphate ores generally grades with low of P2O5. The presentation of beneficiation test on the low grade of phosphate rock in this paper may be used for a reference for development and utilization of the similar reserves. The ore is a marine sedimentary phosphate rock containing low grade of P2O5 and high content of MgO and R2O3; The banded structure shows its suitability for heavy medium separation. The laboratory heavy liquid testing results indicate that as specific gravity of the heavy liquid is 2.85 g/cm3, a rougher concentrate assaying 28.71% P2O5 could be obtained while the rougher tailings contain only 4.47% P2O5. When the combined process with heavy liquid separation followed by direct & re-verse flotation is employed to treat the feed containing 21.15% P2O5, 3.79% MgO, 1.86% Fe2O3, 3.66% Al2O3, 23.75% A.I, and specific gravity of heavy liquid is 2.84 g/cm3, the optimum mesh of grind is 67.5% minus 200 mesh, a phosphate concentrate contained 32.51% P2O5, 0.48% MgO, 0.81% Fe2O3, 1.69% Al2O3 can be produced at a yield of 55.24%. The concentrate P2O5 recovery is 85% with which quality comply with the Class A specifications for production of phosphate fertilizer.

Jan 1, 2014

By L. Bbosa

Positron Emission Particle Tracking (PEPT) and the Discrete Element Method (DEM) are used to investigate Power Draw in a laboratory scale tumbling mill. The mill is run dry in batch mode at different speeds using mono-size charge of glass beads, and is mounted along with a torque transducer to measure power. Particle tracking information from PEPT is used to reconstruct the motion of glass beads and infer the overall charge behavior, while DEM is employed to simulate particle motion and interaction, with collision mechanics calculated using the Hertz-Mindlin contact model. For PEPT and DEM data, the product of torque and average angular velocities in discrete cells are accumulated to obtain mill power. This method is found to be within statistical agreement with measured power for all tests. Spatial distributions plotted from this approach highlight the regions of the mill that draw the greatest power. A second technique to obtain Power Draw from DEM data which sums particle forces against the mill geometry is similarly found to accurately predict mill power with lower statistical error. Keywords: Power Draw, PEPT, DEM

Sep 1, 2012

By Hong Zhong, Shuai Wang, Xin Ma

"In this paper, we report a simple and effective process for producing a surfactant mixture of O-isopropyl-N-ethyl thionocarbamate (IPETC) and 4-(tert-butyl)benzyl mercaptan (BBSH). The composite collector was synthesized via one-pot reaction of sodium isopropyl xanthate, 4-tert-butylbenzylchloride and ethylamine using tert-butyl alcohol as solvent. The whole process for the synthesis of composite collector involves neither foul smelling reagents or intermediates, nor any by-products requires special treatment for disposal, and thus can be scaled up to an industrial level. The flotation response of chalcopyrite and pyrite independently with IPETC and BBSH collectors and with their mixture (the mole ratio of IPETC and BBSH is 1:1) was assessed. The microflotation results showed that the collecting ability of BBSH was slightly stronger than that of IPETC and that IPETC was more selective collector than BBSH against pyrite, and that the composite collector displayed a stronger collecting ability toward chalcopyrite than IPETC, and superior selectivity for chalcopyrite against pyrite than BBSH. The batch flotation results showed that composite collector exhibited better performance than IPETC and BBSH. It was demonstrated that the mixing of IPETC and BBSH would give rise to a synergistic effect significantly enhancing overall flotation performance. In addition, the adsorption mechanism of BBSH on the surface of chalcopyrite was conducted by adsorption test and infrared spectrum measurement, and the results showed that the interaction of BBSH on the chalcopyrite surface was dominated by the chemical adsorption, and the formation of a strong S-M bond plays a key role in the adsorption of mercaptans on minerals surfaces. The developed flotation reagents with special preparation method is the author’s original design, patented (patent of the People’s Republic of China) and have no analogues in the world of mineral processing. (Application number 201810100107.1, ""Alkyl thioether alcohol compounds, methods for their preparation and applications thereof "", China).1. INTRODUCTION Froth flotation is an essential method widely used in the mineral processing industry to selectively separate valuable minerals from gangues[1]. Worldwide, more than 109 tons of materials are treated annually by this method with the majority being metal sulfides and oxides[2]. Nowadays, the judicious utilization of complex sulfides to meet the ever-growing demand of mineral resources gains more attention, due to the gradual depletion of deposits with high grade, making imperative the development of new high-efficiency collectors and mixtures of collectors to process complex minerals. In comparison to individual collectors, the use of mixtures has several notable benefits including lower dosage requirements, improved selectivity, rates and recovery and an increase in the recovery of coarse particles[3-9]. Moreover, in terms of cost and environmental issues, using collector mixtures can reduce the total amount of agents used, thus reducing the overall effect on the environment and economic costs without affecting the flotation performance. Therefore, the search for high-efficiency mixtures of collectors is still interesting and relevant."

Jan 1, 2018

By Yang Xiao, Zhang Yimin, Bao Shenxu, Liu Chun

Stone coal is a unique vanadium-bearing resource in China. Many techniques, such as salt roasting-water leaching, blank roasting-acid leaching, direct acid leaching etc. have been developed for vanadium extraction from stone coal. The vanadium leaching rate can reach 74.9% for stone coal from Jiangxi, but only about 27% of vanadium is leached for Hubei ore by applying salt roasting-water leaching technique. This paper investigats the vanadium occurrence in stone coal by microscope observation and electron probe, and compares the minerals components of stone coal from Jiangxi and Hubei. Although most vanadium exist as an isomorphism by replacing Al(III) from dioctahedral structure in mica group minerals in stone coal from two regions, the free vanadium is remarkably abundant in Jiangxi stone coal than in Hubei stone coal, which results the fact that vandium is relatively readily extracted from former. Moreover, the content of calcite in Hubei stone coal is much higher than that in Jiangxi stone coal. Calcium can react with V2O5 to form water insoluble calcium vanadates during roasting and this may be the reasone why the water leaching rate of vanadium is low for Hubei ore. Acid leaching is more beneficial to the vanadium leaching but other extra methods, such as adding aid-leaching agent and/or increasing acid concentration is need for the ore where vanadium is embeded firmly. This study can effectively guide the selection of vanadium extraction techniques for stone coal from different regions.

Jan 1, 2014

By D. R. Nagaraj, Raymond Farinato

Water constitutes one of the most valuable resources employed in mineral recovery and processing. Identifying potential problems encountered in mineral processing in waters unusable for drinking or agriculture (including seawater and even hypersaline waters), understanding chemical factor interactions, and optimization of flotation reagents will greatly expand our ability to create more sustainable beneficiation technologies. The current paucity of our knowledgebase regarding high salinity effects on flotation clearly signals a need for a significant research effort. We report here results of a study designed to probe effects of pulp chemistry on metallurgical performance in the flotation of Cu and Cu-Mo ores in saline waters. The results clearly demonstrate that pH (more correctly dosage of pH modifier to target a pH set point) has the most significant effect on Mo recovery when using seawater. This is linked to the formation/precipitation of Mg(OH)2 when pH = 10.3 (in seawater). The type of pH modifier used, NaOH or Ca(OH)2, had no impact on Cu or Mo recovery, indicating that Ca2+ ions were not involved in any reduction in Mo recovery in the pH range of 9-11. Our results in tap water spiked with either Ca2+ or Mg2+ ions in the same pH range (controlled by NaOH), confirmed that Ca2+ ions had no effect on Cu or Mo recovery, but that addition of Mg2+ ions had a severe adverse effect on Mo recovery at pH = 9.5, and to a lesser extent on Cu recovery. The onset of Mg(OH)2 precipitation occurred at a higher pH, and the adverse impact of Mg(OH)2 on Cu recovery (and perhaps Mo recovery as well) was less, in sea water than in tap water spiked with Mg2+. These effects are attributed to the mitigating role of the high electrolyte concentration, notably NaCl.

Jan 1, 2014

By Victor Avdokhin, Ivan Kovlekov

"Studies of the process of concentration of gold-containing sands and technogenic resources show that the main reason of gold losses is misbalance between size of gold particles and degree of roughness of mineral bed. This results in free circulation of small gold particles in pores with following washing off the particles from the bed by turbulent flows.We elaborated design of magnetic sluice, intended for improving efficiency of recovering fine gold by optimizing magnetic field of a magnetic system on the base of forming catching coat from magnetic mineralsThe magnetic sluice includes trough-shaped body from magnetic-conducting material. On the bottom of the trough, magnets are placed, and opposite poles of the magnets are oriented outwards. Thickness of the bottom is determined to be sufficient for locking magnetic lines of force of the magnets on each other. The magnets of rectangular plate shape are placed on the rough bottom, covering the whole surface or with spare areas; the magnets are placed across the trough with alteration of rows with the same pole orientation.Catching coat is formed of natural magnetic and weak-magnetic placer minerals in field of magnetic system of the sluice. Magnetic minerals, placing along magnetic lines of force, form rough coat of fluffy structure. Size of the magnetic particles is chosen taking into account expected size of gold particles, which are to be fixed on the rough coat or between the magnetic particles. Changing coarseness of particles of mineral bed allows to regulate selectivity of recovering heavy minerals.Forming artificial fleece from magnetic minerals of initial sand, increasing capacity of the bed and relative hydraulic proportionality of mineral particles of the bed provide for the most effective recovery of fine gold."

Jan 1, 2003

By D. Chakraborty, Neeraj Kumar

"The study provides the comparative analysis of the performance of water only cyclones and hydrocyclone for iron ore fines processing at Joda Iron ore processing plant, Tata Steel. Joda iron ore deposits have higher proportion of kaolinite in the finer fractions and are meant to be separated with cyclones. The iron processing flowsheet of Joda comprises of water only cyclone for beneficiation of iron ore fines. Water only cyclones are used for the beneficiation of fines in the iron ore processing industry and have a larger cone angle compared to that of conventional hydrocyclones to enhance the density effect in the separation. They are aimed to achieve better product quality of underflow however; the desired result could not be achieved at the Joda processing plant. The water only cyclones were operating at the corrected cut-size of about 60 micron with an imperfection of 0.40 and water split to underflow was approximately 10%. The overall Fe recovery from the water only cyclones were 60%. Since the quality of fines produced from the water only cyclone couldn’t be improved, an attempt was made to process the fraction in the conventional hydrocyclone to achieve the desired product quality. The trial results indicated better product quality with the Fe recovery of 72% at corrected cut-size of 70 microns and imperfection of around 0.29. In view of above results it was recommended to replace the water only cyclones with hydrocyclones to achieve higher product quality of about 60% Fe content.INTRODUCTION Water only cyclones were installed at wet plant, Joda to process the classifier fines where the cyclone underflow is considered as concentrate and overflow is discarded as slime. Because of the lower capacity of the cyclones 30% of the classifier overflow was bypassed directly to thickener. Apart from this the quality of fines produced from the water only cyclone couldn’t be improved further hence an attempt was made to process the fraction in the conventional hydrocyclone to achieve the desired product quality and quantity. Hydrocyclone was installed at Joda after replacing stub-cyclone and came into operation on 23rd Aug’ 2017.The process variables of water only cyclones and hydrocyclones are tabulated below:"

Jan 1, 2018

By Leming Ou, Hongqiang Li, Li Zeng, Qiming Feng, Yiping Lu, Guofan Zhang

"The entrainment of sericite, especially in the presence of hydrophobic microcrystalline graphite, leads to the poor flotation selectivity of microcrystalline graphite ore. In this paper, it was attempted to reduce entrainment of sericite, selective flocculation of microcrystalline graphite using polyethylene oxide (PEO) was studied. For the sake of flocculate microcrystalline graphiteselectively, flocculation tests of microcrystalline graphite and sericite single mineral were conducted.To investigate the effect of selectiveflocculation of graphite on entrainment of sericite in microcrystalline graphite flotation, batch flotation tests of graphite single mineral and artificial mixtures were conducted; theflocculationselectivity of PEO of different molecular weight (M.W.) was alsocompared inartificial mixture flotation. Inthe end, the structure of flocs in different particle size was studied by sieve analysis and microscopic observation. The resultsindicated that PEO of molecular weightone million andtwo million could selectivelyflocculate the microcrystalline graphite and reduce the entrainment of sericite at a lower dosage; further increasingof the dosage of PEO(M.W. ?two million) led to hetero-flocculation between graphite and sericiteandmadethe ash content of concentrate increase again."

Jan 1, 2014

This study examines the surface alteration and flotation behaviour of synthetic moncheite, PtPd(BiTe)2, in the presence of pentlandite. The telluride minerals contribute around 20% ~ 30% and up to 45% of the PGM present in the Platreef ore and are considered to be slow floating as there is evidence of these minerals reporting to the tailings. It was proposed that oxidation products from other minerals and grinding media would affect the mineral surface composition and floatability thereby causing inadvertent depression of moncheite due to precipitating ions. ToF-SIMS analyses (time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry) was used to characterise the mineral surface as well as the extent of surface alteration. Microflotation was used to deter-mine the hydrophobicity of the synthetic minerals. Conditioning of moncheite in the presence of pentlandite reduced the flotation response of the + 38 -106µm size fraction from > 99% to 56%. This was due to pentlandite dissolution products (iron and nickel hydroxy species) which formed overlayers on the mineral surfaces thereby inhibiting the adsorption of collector. In addition, further grinding of these samples, with and without pentlandite conditioning showed a negative effect on recovery due to the fineness of the particle size distribution and there was no advantage gained from any possible exposure of fresh sites in the sample.

Jan 1, 2014

By M. F. He

The depression of pyrite in marmatite flotation by a new depressant Sodium Glycerine-xanthate (SGX) has been investigated through microflotation, zeta potential, and adsorption measurements in systems open to the atmosphere. The flotation tests of single mineral show that in the presence of SGX, marmatite can be activated by Cu2+ and shows good flotability, while pyrite can?t be activated and therefore shows poor flotability, as a result these two minerals can be separated using butyl xanthate as the collector. The depression mechanism of SGX on sulfide minerals is discussed based on Zeta potential and adsorption isotherm. Zeta potential experiments demonstrate that at the presence of Cu2+, SGX can strongly adsorb on the surface of pyrite, while it can?t adsorb on the surface of marmatite, thus the results are in accordance with those of flotation experiments; the results of adsorption isotherms show that the adsorption density of SGX on pyrite is greater.

Jan 1, 2014

By T. M. Bhatti

The main purpose of present study was to characterize the dissolution of uranium from low-grade black shale with indigenous isolated strain of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans (BSAF-01). The nature of shale is quartzite-schistose and contains uranium content of 0.005% U3O8 (50 ppm U3O8). Uranium is present in the tetravalent oxidation state (U4+) in the shale matrix. The main minerals identified are graphite, quartz, pyrite, mica minerals (phlogopite, biotite, sericite, and chlorite), microcline, K-feldspar and kerogen (hydrocarbon-compounds). Bacterial oxidation of pyrite was an acid-generating system and produced sulfuric acid and ferric sulfate during this biological phenomenon. A series of bioleaching experiments were conducted in shake flasks for leaching of uranium from black shale. The leaching experiments were performed at 50% pulp density using indigenous Fe- and S-oxidizing bacterium (Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans). Bioleaching data revealed that about 90% ~ 95% U3O8 was leached out from black shale ore. Uranium dissolution from shale depends on pH (pH 1.5~1.9), redox potential (=500 mev) and the concentration of Fe2+ and Fe3+ ions in the leaching environment. The oxidative leaching of U4+ involves a redox reaction with Fe3+ as an oxidant and bacterial re-oxidation of Fe2+ in acidic leaching environment. Uranium leaching efficiency was attributed to the sulfuric acid and ferric sulfate production during bacterial oxidation of pyrite.

Jan 1, 2014

By S. K. Chaudhuri

With a growing emphasis on maximizing the value by rapidly deploying it across their assets, mining firms are eager to identify any issues that may hinder such efforts and to refine their approaches to overcome them. As such a CDE vision can be considered realized when the following components are addressed and functioning as intended - People: the right resources working together and efficiently to achieve shared goals, Process: well-defined workflows mapped out for key value processes, Technology: availability of the correct tools and applications to increase efficiency in work execution and Locations: regional locations/ sites that need to be linked for collaboration and information exchange. For the above vision, an approach that considers the degree of interaction between the roles in metallurgy operations, mineral resource planning, mine engineering, plant operations, logistics and infrastructure, and which accounts for the current technology states across these groups to determine sub-processes where the impact of a CDE will be the most is critical. In effect, CDE is more about transforming an organization?s operational philosophy than a technology driven project. This paper examines the definition and components of a CDE in a mining context. Real-time operations co-ordination, maintenance interventions, production analysis and optimization processes are examined along with current state technologies and manual processes as candidates which are likely to result in most benefits from collaborative work processes. Finally, the paper examines technologies that can be used to further enable a collaborative working environment.

Sep 1, 2012