De-sliming of penalty u-bearing particles in the recleaner feed of a copper concentrator
Date
2016
Authors
Lem, J.P.
Skinner, W.
Zanin, M.
Editors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Conference paper
Citation
IMPC 2016 - 28th International Mineral Processing Congress, 2016, vol.4, pp.2768-2774
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
XXVIII International Mineral Processing Congress(IMPC 2016) (11 Sep 2016 - 15 Sep 2016 : Quebec City, Canada)
Abstract
It is well known that the specific density of minerals has adverse influence on the classification performance of a hydrocyclone, particularly when liberated high density minerals such as gold or uranium are present in sulphide ores. These liberated heavy minerals often misreport to the underflow and recirculate to the system. Such phenomena does result in serious issues in a closed-grinding circuit, such as overgrinding, leading to production of flaky particles (as in gold) or ultrafines, in addition to increased energy inefficiency. In plants which present gold liberated at coarser size, loss of gold due to cyclone inefficiency is sometimes prevented by incorporating gravity concentrators into the grinding circuit to recover the gold. The work reported in this paper looks at whether the effect of density will prevent successful rejection of liberated U-bearing minerals in the –10μm size range of a plant re-cleaner feed, which is necessary to minimize penalty U accumulation in a copper concentrator. The study was carried out using a cyclone rig with spigot diameter of 0.25 inches in combination with batch flotation. It was found that the density effect is almost negligible at particle sizes below 10μm. Consequently, the liberated U-bearing particles finer than 10 μm were successfully removed in the overflow stream as rejects and hence U grade in the copper concentrate remarkably reduced, by 16 ppm. Based on the results, de-sliming of the re-cleaner feed was recommended for plant trial and implementation
School/Discipline
Dissertation Note
Provenance
Description
Access Status
Rights
Copyright 2016 Canadian Institute of Mining Metallurgy & Petroleum