Lepidolite Heavy-Medium Separation Flotation Process Flowchart


DETALLES

| Introducción detallada

Process Introduction
 
Lepidolite beneficiation is influenced by numerous factors, such as ore type, mineral assemblage, gangue characteristics, and ore grade. Currently, the main methods for lepidolite separation include flotation, manual sorting, thermal cracking, heavy-medium separation, and combined beneficiation techniques.
 
Process flow
 
Our company has conducted extensive beneficiation tests and research on spodumene samples representative of different regions. Based on the distinct mineralogical properties and occurrence states of spodumene versus gangue minerals, we have made adaptive improvements to the current heavy-medium separation technology and developed a combined heavy-medium and flotation process for spodumene beneficiation. This process has yielded excellent results in production practice.
 
Application Example
 
At a spodumene mine in Canada, the raw ore grade was 1.19%. The ore samples were crushed and processed to a size range of 6–0.5 mm. After separation using heavy-medium separation, the concentrate achieved a grade of 6.56% with a recovery rate of 83.97%. The tailings from the heavy-medium separation had a grade of 0.23%. This mine can directly discard the tailings after heavy-medium separation. The quality of the concentrate meets the Grade I standard for spodumene concentrates.
In a spodumene mine in Xinjiang, the raw ore grade was 1.49%. After heavy-medium separation, the concentrate achieved a Li2O content of 5.78% with a recovery rate of 83.05%. The tailings yield was 76.19%, and the tailings grade was 0.37%, allowing them to be directly discarded.
In a certain spodumene mine in Sichuan, the raw ore grade was 1.14%. After heavy-medium separation, the concentrate grade reached 5.09%, with a recovery rate of 45.70%. The tailings yield was 30%, with a grade of 0.30%. By employing heavy-medium separation, this mine can produce a portion of qualified concentrate products while discarding 30% of the tailings. The middlings are then fed into a ball mill for grinding and subsequently recovered via flotation—thus, the mine is processed using a combined heavy-medium and flotation beneficiation process.
Through extensive testing on various ores, it has been determined that the combined heavy-media and flotation process offers significant advantages over conventional flotation processes. This process allows ore to be separated at coarser particle sizes, yielding high-quality concentrate products. For ores that are easy to beneficiate, the heavy-media separation process alone can achieve excellent beneficiation results. For ores of medium floatability and those that are difficult to beneficiate, the heavy-media separation process can produce some high-grade concentrate products while also discarding a portion of the tailings. The intermediate-grade concentrate products, which have slightly higher grades, can then be fed into a ball mill for further recovery via flotation.
The flotation-regrinding process is an excellent technique for spodumene ore and exhibits strong adaptability to most types of ore.
 
Image Association Diagram
 
 

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