Papers - Sedimentation - Preparation and Reconditioning of Sink-float Media (T. P. 1985, Min. Tech., May 1946)

Interest in the sink-float plant operated by the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Co. at Kellogg, Idaho, has recently been largely confined to the preparation and reconditioning of the galena medium. The ease and simplicity of these operations in a concentrating mill producing a flotation lead concentrate has occasioned enough comment to possibly justify a brief description. The subject is treated from an operator's viewpoint only; no effort is made to discuss it in a theoretical or technical manner. Plant at Bunker Hill The sink-float plant was first operated in December 1941. It was built for the purpose of quickly increasing mill capacity with a minimum of equipment. It is the Huntington-Heberlein sink and float process using galena medium and is operated under license from the Sink and Float Corporation, New York city. Lead-zinc ore from the Bunker Hill mine is crushed to pass a 1¼ in, screen and is then washed and separated on vibrating screens having 4½-mm. round-hole punched plates. The screen under-size, amounting to 33 per cent of the mill feed, is dewatered and sent to the ball-mill feed bins. The screen oversize goes to the sink-float plant, where 50 per cent of the oversize, or 33 per cent of the mill feed, is float, which is washed free of medium and disposed of as a tailing. The remaining 33 per cent is sink, which, after washing, is crushed to pass 36 in. and joins the under-size in the ball-mill feed bins. The normal plant capacity is 1700 tons per 24 hr. About 1.7 per cent of the total lead and 3.3 per cent of the total zinc in the feed is lost with the sink-float tailings (Table I). More complete descriptions of the H. H. process and Bunker Hill sink-float plant are given in several recent articles, listed at the end of the paper. Preparation OF Medium at Bunker Hill New medium is made intermittently as needed, usually 12 hr. in each 6 days. A small portion of the current mill flotation concentrate is diverted from the lead cleaner cells to a I-in. vertical sand pump and pumped to a two-cell 36-in. Agitair flotation machine, where NaCn and ZnSO4 are added and the grade of concentrate is improved as shown in Table 2. Tailing from this operation is returned by gravity