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By Sanjay Chaudhuri, V. K. Kalyani, Pradeep Kumar Singh, T. Gouri Charan

"Indian coal industry is the world's third largest in terms of production and fourth largest in terms of proven coal resources. Indian coal deposits are generally of high ash content varying from 24 to 50%. The coking coal reserves of India constitute about 12% of the total coal inventory, and the coals are washed in washeries, before being used for metallurgical purposes. The processes used for washing coking coal is Jigs, Heavy medium bath and Cyclones for the sizes upto 0.5mm, while the coal fines are washed in spirals and conventional flotation cells. Extensive studies were carried out for understanding the performance of an operating conventional flotation plant. The performance studies revealed that appreciable quantity of clean coal is being lost in the tailings due to varied reasons and the required quantity and quality was not achieved. In this study, laboratory Flotation experiments were carried out to examine the cleaning characteristics of the said tailing and to determine the effective process parameters for recovery of clean coal at desired ash level ( 16-17%). Response Surface Methodology was applied to investigate the operating conditions of the Froth Flotation for modeling and optimization. Primary study reflects that there is a possibility to recover clean coal at 16-17% ash level with a yield of about 60-70% from that Flotation tailing of feed ash about 28%.INTRODUCTIONMost of the Indian coking coals are difficult in cleaning characteristics and high ash content due to its drift origin and its age of formation for more than 225 million years. Indian coking coal reserve is limited about 12% of total coal reserve. The minerals are homogeneously mixed with the coal macerals. The open cast mining practice and mechanized mining methods are being adopted to meet the increasing demands of coals resulting in generation of more coal fines and subsequently the quality is deteriorated. Indian good quality coking coal reserves of higher seams are fast depleting and hence coking coals of difficult cleaning characteristics of lower seams (LVC) are being now explored. Due to increased mechanization of coal mines to cope up the increased demand and followed by size reduction of lower seam coals in search of better liberation , the coal fines are increasing by leaps and bounds. The processes used for washing coking coal is Jigs, Heavy medium bath and Cyclones for the sizes upto 0.5mm, while the coal fines are washed in spirals and conventional flotation cells."

Jan 1, 2018

By J. Y. ` Xie

The paper introduced bio-oxidation plants of refractory gold concentrate in China and CCGRI cultures. CCGRI cultures are composed of bacteria and archaea. Archaea Ferroplasma acidiphilum is very thick and fills whole mineral surface. It plays a more dominant role in CCGRI process. Several years of practice has proved that the operating temperature in bioreactors between 38~52?,gold recovery is almost same. Pulp concentration has been increased each year and reached to 25%.

Jan 1, 2014

By S. Sarioglan

The bleaching of edible oils, industrial oils, and some chemicals may be achieved using natural and acid-activated clays. These materials remove impurities and pigments from the oils. In this work, a bentonite clay from Turkey (Somas bentonite) was activated with different concentration of H2SO4 and HCl at 70~90°C and 5~8 hours. Under these conditions several cations were removed from natural bentonite (Al, Mg, and Fe) and DTA-TGA, FT-IR curves of the solids obtained after acid treatment were examined. Treatment time and acid concentration increased the degree of destruction of the bentonite structure which was determined by ICP. Activated samples were tested in order to verify their capacity to bleach soybean oil and compared to standard commercial bleaching clays. The experimental results indicate that treated samples with H2SO4 have the same efficient in bleaching crude soybean oil with the standards and treated sample with HCl is more efficient in bleaching than the commercial products.

Jan 1, 2014

The objective of the paper is to develop a material balance calculation procedure for a production unit involving two plants separated by a pipeline. The case study is taken from the oil sands industry. The raw sands are first mixed with water in a conditioning plant, then transported through a pipeline to an oil extraction plant. The combination of pipeline dimensions and nominal throughput creates a significant variable time lag between the two plants. As usual, mass balance calculations required for the evaluation of plant performance indicators, such as bitumen recovery, are inaccurate due to measurement errors. In addition, in the present case study, the time lag of the pipe creates an additional source of uncertainty, which may lead to misinterpretations and wrong decisions. Raw data are usually reconciled through steady-state mass balancing, to correct for measurement errors. However, because of the significant pipeline dynamic lag, standard steady-state daily mass balance may fail at giving an appropriate picture of the operations. The proposed solution to the data reconciliation problem includes the use of a pipeline plug-flow model in the mass balance calculation. To fulfil the industrial constraint that current data reconciliation must not modify past reconciled values, while still satisfying dynamic constraints, a daily one-step method, i.e. a unitary filter-ing horizon, is recommended. The method is illustrated with simulation data, and the results com-pared to those of standard data reconciliation methods.

Jan 1, 2014

By Dongyun Liang

Process mineralogy focuses on the chemical components and mineral composition of ore, dissemination size of valuable minerals, the occurrence of valuable and detrimental elements as well as the behavior of each mineral in the process. Through determining process mineralogy parameters and analyzing the characteristics of minerals, the results of process mineralogy study can provide mineralogy data for making a reasonable mineral processing technology program and optimizing the process. A detailed process mineralogy study is carried out for a complex rare metal ore in this paper and the results show that niobium mainly exists in the form of ferrocolumbite as well as nioboaeschynite and zirconium primarily occurs as zircon. The valuable minerals including Th-nioboaeschynite, ferrocolumbite, zircon, etc. have the characteristics of fine dissemination size, wide size range, complex chemical composition and variable physical properties, which mean it is a refractory ore. According to the results of mineral composition of ore, chemical composition of minerals, dissemination size of minerals, magnetism ranges of minerals and the distribution of niobium and zirconium, the process of ?desliming-Nb-Zr bulk flotation? is designed for this ore and the niobium-zirconium bulk rough concentrate with the grade of Nb2O5 9.43%, ZrO2 24.95%, Ta2O5 0.36% and the recovery of Nb2O5 77.66%, ZrO2 76.70%, Ta2O5 75.13% to crude ore can be obtained in the whole process closed-circuit test.

Sep 1, 2012

This article takes the OMRON C200HE PLC for example introducing its application in mica-paper production equipment, including style selection, address assignment of I/O point, and programming for different function. In the transformation process of simulated data and digit data, the corresponding relations between two data and so on are also discussed.

Jan 1, 2014

By L. Q. Luo

SHP-F3200 wet high-intensity magnetic separator (HIMS) was successfully used to separate the complex and weakly magnetic iron ores being composed of specularite, limonite and siderite in Ji-uquan Iron and Steel (Group) Co Ltd (JISCO). It is more and more difficult to separate iron ores from gangues, such as quartz, jasperite and phyllite, as the properties of iron ores gradually become more complicated and refractory. Some technologies have been used to improve SHP-F3200 HIMS, including modifying angle of magnetic polar from 90°to 83°, cooling exciting coils by oil instead of air, adding reverse-washing device to wash off magnetic particles, adjusting the tooth-space of matrix from 5.0 mm to 3.5 mm or 2.5 mm, so as to enhance the recovery of fine iron ore particles. It is still difficult to meet the requirement for recovering more difficultly-separated iron and the demands for high-grade concentrate of iron. In this paper, after analyzing magnetic force exerting on iron ore particles within different separating sections of SHP HIMS, it is proposed to apply the flowing-film technique into the HIMS. Thus a new-type LY matrix is designed to form magnetic gradient vertically, combined with a special flowing-film feeder to improve the existing SHP HIMS. The moving pattern of magnetic particles in pulp in HIMS separation district also has been analyzed in this paper. And the test on the SHP-F700 HIMS shows, under the condition of iron ore containing 30.52% Fe, with particle size of ?0.074 mm accounting for around 75%, if applied with flow-film technique, the iron recovery will be up from 69.45% to 76.07%, by 6.62 percent, with the same grade of concentrates of iron. The calculation of iron yield of every size fraction and the tests showed that film magnetic separation (Film-MS) could promote the iron yield of each size fraction, denoting an excellent result of application of the film technique to SHP HIMS. The mechanism of the film magnetic separation technique is to convert the turbulent flow and disordered movement of dynamic mass particles in the pulp into a directional and ordered laminar flow along the surface of tooth plate so as to strengthen the separation effects.

Jan 1, 2014

By Y. G. Sun

This paper mainly reported separation manganese silver oxidized ores process by amylum de-gradation reduction and its influencing factors. When dosage is given according to nMn : nH2SO4 : n(C6H10O5)n : nH2O=1:k21.8: k116.66:30, the amount of up to 95.93% Mn leach rate and less than 2% silver loss can be obtained. Cyanidation process was used to extracted silver from leaching Mn residues. Silver leach rate could reach 94.15% at consumed amount of 1kg/t NaCN for 1h. Silver leach recovery rate was more than 92.27% by leaching Mn and cyanidation two-step processes so manganese and silver were separated effectively.

Jan 1, 2014

By Dave Deglon

The Western Cape Mineral Processing Facility (WCMPF) is a collaborative educational initiative between the Departments of Chemical Engineering of the University of Cape Town, the University of Stellenbosch and the Cape Technikon. The WCMPF was established in 1989 with the aim of improving mineral processing education in the Western Cape. Since its inception the WCMPF has had a number of successes in this area, especially in improving the quality of mineral processing practical training. In addition, the WCMPF has played an important role in promoting liaison and interaction between tertiary educational institutions teaching mineral processing in the Western Cape. Over the past decade the WCMPF has played a key role in the education of over five hundred mineral processing graduates and diplomates. This paper presents an overview of the activities of the WCMPF and attempts to encapsulate the ‘lessons learned’ from over a decade of successful functioning as a collaborative educational initiative in mineral processing.

Jan 1, 2003

By Xin Tan

In this paper, two types of low-grade complex zinc oxide ores (sandstone and limestone ores) from Yunnan province, China were investigated. A large number of argillaceous and alkaline gangue makes it infeasible to treat the ores with heap leaching. Although wet metallurgy can be considered, the lower efficiency of liquid-solid separation, the high cost, and low revenue limit this technology to be put into practice in large-scale. In order to solve this problem, a new technology combining mineral processing method with metallurgy technique is studied to process this refractory ore that consists of sandstone ore with 5.84 per centZn and limestone ore with 6.50 per centZn. The results of the tests showed that zinc can effectively be recovered from two types of the ores by using the new technology, and the acid consumption can be remarkably reduced. For sandstone sample, 82.96 per cent Zn was recovered by flotation and final Zn recovery by flotation+ hydro-metallurgy can be up to 78.17 per cent from the ore. In addition, for sandstone, acid consumption can be reduced from 270kg/t by direct acid, leaching to 76.92kg/t by flotation + hydrometallurgy combination. For limestone sample, 85.90 per centZn was recovered by flotation and totally 80.95 per cent Zn can be recovered by new technology which is a combination of mineral processing and metallurgy. Besides, H2SO4 consumption can be reduced from 450kg/t for sandstone originally to113.79kg/t after using new technology. One merit of this new process technology is that the zinc sulfides and oxides can be recovered without desliming in the flotation cells at the different stage and make sure the concentrate products as a good feed for hydrometallurgical technology. This study provided pretty good technical support for tapping low-grade refractory zinc oxide ores. Keywords: low-grade zinc oxide ores, limonite, non-desliming beneficiation, flotation + hydrometallurgy combination

Sep 1, 2012

Traditional mineral processing techniques are more and more difficult to recover the increasingly low grade phosphate ores today. Although bioleaching method has been attempted to process low grade ores in hydrometallurgical field due to economical and environmental reason, it has been hardly used in leaching phosphate ore at home and abroad. Strains of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans and Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans were collected and separated from the acid drainage of a coal mine in Anhui province of China. Ultraviolet irradiation and Microwave inducement were applied to the bacterial cultivation process to produce strains of Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans and Acidithi-obacillus ferrooxidans able to tolerate extremely low pH conditions and generate sulphuric acid by oxidizing elemental sulfur or sulphide and the mutagenesis can achieve higher leaching rate. The bioleaching result will improve more by the addition of Tween series surfactants.

Jan 1, 2014

By H. D. Yu

In this paper, an evaluation about the process mineralogy of the rich iron mine in Mongolia with comprehensive methods is given; this provides foundation of the comprehensive recovery of iron and cobalt in the ore. The research shows that the iron?s grade is 61.23%, Co?s grade is 0.02%, the ore is rich iron ore and its Co content also reaches border mining grade. For the ore, if want get high grade iron concentrate powder, must identify the mineral composition and the occurrence of iron and take into ac-count the recovery of Co content as associated resources. Chemical phase analysis results show that 86.35% of iron exists in magnetite, which means that the theoretical recovery ratio of iron is close to 86%. Minerals spectrum analysis confirmed that the magnetite containing a small amount of Mg, Al, and other impurities, the actual iron minerals to 70.28%, which means that theoretically iron grade iron concentrate only close to 70.28%. Based on the result of iron chemical phase analysis, by investigating the liberation of sulfide minerals and gangue, the recovery index of iron can be forecasted, when grinding fineness is 35%, 45%, 55% and 65% bellow 0.074mm,theoretical content of Fe in iron concentrate separately is 67.71%,67.88%,68.78%,and 69.43%,accordingly the theoretical recovery of Fe is 87.38%,87.05%,86.92% and 86.63%. From the perspective of process mineralogy, the forecast mineral beneficiation indicators show that the ore is easy sorting ore, iron processing operations have higher recovery rate, but wants sorting of high-grade iron ore concentrate still need appropriate grinding fineness. Furthermore, associated element Co, existing mostly in pyrite and pyrrhotite, is valuable in the ore. Pyrite and pyrrhotite have ideal liberation under grinding, so cobalt can be easily enriched in sulfide concentrate.

Jan 1, 2014

By B. Rai

Aluminum is produced by the Hall-Héroult process, which involves passing a current through a molten mixture of alumina dissolved in cryolite (Na3AlF6) to reduce the alumina to aluminum. This process occurs in an electrolytic cell comprising a steel shell lined with a carbon cathode and refractory bricks. After a certain period of operation, the carbon cathode deteriorates and is removed from the cell along with the refractory bricks. These removed materials are referred to as spent pot lining or ?SPL?. Typically, 30 Kg of SPL waste is generated for every ton of Aluminum produced. Globally aluminum smelters produce more than 500,000 tons of SPL each year. Even though SPL has a high fuel value (8000 to 9000 BTU/lb) and contains valuable metals, it is classified as a hazardous material due to its cyanide content and leachable fluorides. Various disposal/recycle techniques have been developed over the years for SPL but none of them is satisfactory. Thus, large quantities of SPL are still being dumped in landfills. In some countries, even the land filling of SPL is not permitted. The safe disposal of SPL thus remains a challenging problem to the aluminum industry and the search continues to find methods of converting SPL into a non-hazardous waste and/or recovering the valuable materials contained in the SPL. We have developed a process to produce hydraulic setting cements (eco-cement) containing a novel fluoride rich cementitious phase, from SPL by an energy efficient, low temperature clinkering route. A raw mix blend of SPL, lime/limestone, calcium sulfate and tailings sands based on a set of design criteria developed by us, is clinkered in a two stage process; 2 hours soak at 800 °C followed by clinkering at 1000 °C for another 2 hours, to produce a soft clinker. The SPL eco-cement is made by grinding the clinker to a fineness of 5000 cm2/g Blaine with 1% by weight borax as a set retarder. A good quality cement having as high as 20 % by weight of SPL in the raw mix (28 % by weight in the cement clinker) is thus produced. The physical properties of the SPL cements are found to be comparable to the Indian standard (IS) specifications for Ordinary Portland Cements (OPC). We have produced the cement in a few Kg batches and tested the reproducibility of results from batch to batch for further scale up. Once commercialized, this process has a potential of converting SPL into value-added cement products. Keywords: cement, spent pot lining, clinkering, fluoride, aluminum, ordinary portland cements

Sep 1, 2012

By Z. Q. He

This paper introduces the structure and working principle of SLon magnetic separator that has excellent performance in iron removal, and summarizes a part of the examples of applications, which applies this machine to remove iron from non-metallic ores, and shows widespread prospect of application of this machine in the purification of non-metallic ores.

Jan 1, 2014

By N. Jovanovic, A. Vazirizadeh

"The main objective of this study is to find a solution to design a mass flow observer system with the minimum required sensors and maximum observability for a mineral processing plant. The second objective is designing a mass flow observer configuration with high reliability to manage sensor failures. This configuration will provide a robust monitoring system that increases plant availability and process measurement fault detection. Furthermore, the monitoring system is expected to improve process efficiency. In this investigation, the procedure of designing an observer system is presented along with three models to design the sensor network. The advantages and disadvantages of each models are discussed and finally the models result for an industrial case are presented and analyzed. INTRODUCTION The concepts of observability and redundancy of mass flow are directly linked with the ability to solve and estimate the mass flow. There are hundreds of streams in a process plant flowsheet, and for technical and economic reasons it is not possible to measure all mass flows. It is thus important to know for a set of measured streams, which of the unmeasured streams can be estimated. The concept of observability deals with this issue. It is also valuable to know whether a measured mass flow of streams can be estimated even if a sensor fails for some reason. Redundancy deals with this failure question. A stream is said to be observable if it can be estimated by using the measurements and/ or mass conservation equations. Also, a stream is redundant if it is observable even when its measurement is removed. Observability and redundancy analysis can be exploited for adding new measuring instruments. It can also play a useful role in efficient decomposition and data reconciliation problem (Narasimhan and Jordache 1999). The value of an observer system cannot be justified without considering its benefits. This justification is done through evaluation of data reconciliation, gross error detection and improving process performance such as outlined below:"

Jan 1, 2018

By Q. Zhang

Phosphate tailings through Flotation contains large amount of dolomite which is difficult to be separated from apatite. In this present research, phosphate tailings is recycled by Flotation i.e. re-processing. High-purity dolomite with purity as high as 91.17% is seperated, which contains 19.82% of MgO. The results of orthogonal test show that the effect of various levels of different factors on the high-purity dolomite floatated. Future utilization of purified dolomite is also discussed: magnesium fertiliser especially magnesium phosphate is expected to be an ideal product from high-purity dolomite.

Jan 1, 2014

By B. P. von der Heyden, P. Neethling, M. Tadieb, L. Babedi

The effects of trace element substitutions in sphalerite mineral structure on optimised floatation response have, as yet, not been fully constrained or fully understood. To further this important field of study, this contribution focusses specifically on mineral and surface chemistry, and electro-chemistry of Cd- and Co- substituted synthetic sphalerites using Raman spectroscopy and Zeta potential experimentation. Raman spectroscopy illustrates that the presence of these impurities results in the introduction of a new mode, the relative intensity of which can be correlated (Cd r2=0.95 and Co r2= 0.99) to the dopant concentration. Comparison to X-ray Diffraction results measuring the unit cell parameter further shows that this relative intensity (Cd r2=0.81 and Co r2= 0.99) may provide insights into the degree of lattice strain within the mineral structure. The zeta potential distribution of an un-activated Cd-sphalerite show no detrimental effect as function of Cd content. Although the iso-electric point shifted from 2.45 at 1 wt.% Cd to 2.69 at 3.68 wt.% Cd, the zeta potential remained negative at alkaline media. Conversely, cobalt at low concentration of 0.36 wt.% had a detrimental effect on the surface charge, resulting to a close to neutral zeta potential at different pH. The adsorption of Cu ions on the surface of Co-bearing sphalerite conditioned in an alkaline media slightly increases the zeta potential of Co-sphalerite. While the Cd-bearing sphalerite decrease in negative zeta potential at >1 wt.% Cd indicating a complete exchange between Cu and Zn. The results presented herein illustrate that, based on the chemical nature of the substituting metal; sphalerite will exhibit multiple response to flotation reagents. Maximum recovery of zinc can thus only be achieved through multidisciplinary study and fundamental understanding of the effects of cation substitution on mineral structure and surface chemistry, the latter necessarily affecting the floatation response.

Jan 1, 2018

Poor floatability of fine particles is known to be the main cause of the low recovery of ilmenite in Panzhihua, which is the largest titanium mine of China. To get an optimum ilmenite recovery, selective flocculation, and flotation of fine ilmenite was investigated through flotation tests, particle size analysis, zeta potential tests and scanning electron microscopy. The results indicate that carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) shows flocculation effect for both ilmenite and titanaugite without selectivity, while selective flocculation could be realized by the combination of water glass and CMC. It is because that competitive adsorption would take place on these two kinds of mineral when water glass and CMC are used together. On the surface of ilmenite, the adsorption ability of CMC is stronger than that of water glass, so that CMC can absorb to the same extent irrespective of the presence of a pre-adsorbed layer of water glass and ilmenite particles is flocculated by CMC. The same cannot be said of the titanaugite phase as water glass strongly adsorbs onto the titanaugite, and the adsorption of CMC is hindered. Therefore, the titanaugite particles keep dispersion. Furthermore, the flotation of fine ilmenite particles is feasible as the ilmenite floccules could react with sodium oleate. In the flotation separation of Panzhihua ilmenite ore, the recovery of TiO2 increased from 52.63% to 68.28% by selective flotation. Keywords: ilmenite, flotation, selective flocculation, adsorption

Sep 1, 2012

By J. Masinja

The mining industry is known to be a potential major contributor to the industrial development of any economy. Large-scale mining has been going on in Zambia for the last 100 years. The impact of mining in Zambia has been to create a development corridor along the line of rail to the Copperbelt Province, where hitherto, mining was concentrated, and then to develop a large consolidated high-density economic zone covering an area of about 72 km by 60km. This area is home to a number of very large integrated copper/cobalt mining complexes. The mining zone has expanded to the Northwestern Province in the last 10 years, where the largest copper mine in Africa now exists, having produced about 300 000 tonnes of copper in 2011. The total output of the Zambian mining industry is now about 820 000 tonnes per annum with projections of reaching 1.5 million by 2015, due to new Greenfield investments expected to come online by then. These new mining industry developments have come on the back of strong and sustained high base metal prices, in the last 10 years or so, due to demand mainly from China and India. This new lease of life has increased the contribution of the sector to the national treasury. The mining industry in Zambia has undergone a very important ownership restructuring with the sale of the previously Government owned parastatal, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) which dominated the sector, to allow for private sector participation. The privatization process lasted from about 1995 to about 2002. The recent growth of the mining sector has unfortunately not been matched by an adequate supply of skilled manpower for various reasons. These include: (i) A lack of strong in-house training strategies by the new mine owners (ii) Decrease in industry support to the training institutions (iii) The demise of and restructuring of ZCCM which has consequently limited the Government human resources planning tools for the mining sector (iv) The cyclic nature for the fortunes of the sector has lead to fluctuating interest of student recruitment into training institutions (v) Limitations, both staff and equipment, in the training institutions (vi) A re-structuring of the training institutions This paper examines the current status, and student output from tertiary training institutions for the mining sector in Zambia. This is then compared to the skilled labour demands of the sector. The various cause and effect issues are considered and a proposal on how this skills gap could be addressed sustainably is proposed. Keywords: skills gap, graduate training, quality of graduates

Sep 1, 2012

By B. W. Zhao

Quantitative analysis of minerals composing in ore is primary in process mineralogy, a veracious quantification and analysis is very crucial to optimize or design a beneficiation process, especially for a low grade and complicated ore. This paper will discuss a SEM-EDS based quantitative analysis developed in JKtech Australia through an example from Jinchuan lean ore. For a low grade, com-plex intergrowths and texture lean ore, chemical phase analysis of value minerals and identification by optical microscope are very essential, unite the SEM-EDS based quantitative analysis, we can understand exactly the lean ore, explain and quantify the process performance.

Jan 1, 2014