Beneficiation of Iron Ore Slimes using Optimized Hydrocyclone Operation

Beneficiation is the process of separating iron ore from the gangue particles like alumina, silica. Increasing the iron ore demand, with the faster depletion of high grade iron ore, it is the time to use low grade iron ore slime as a feed stock rather leaves as a waste. Mainly coarser fraction is rich in iron content and finer fraction contained large amount of gangue. The usual size range of alumina is less than 15 microns. Here, hydrocyclone is used to separate fine gangue from the rich iron content, which is coarse in nature. The other process for the same separation is still under development. Initial observations include the separation of iron ore through hydrocyclone is not only by size, but also depends on the mineral density. Hydrocyclone classifier performance calculation till now is based on single average mineral density component behaviour. But, the iron ore feed to the cyclone composed of a mixture of particles of varying degrees of liberation and sizes. Therefore, present work is aimed to study the separation by size wise component classification curves. This involves on varying set of parameters i.e. spigot, pressure, cone angle at 15% solid concentration. The component analysis has been done by combination of volumetric analysis, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) and gravimetric method for ensuring the size-wise distribution of the Fe2O3, Al2O3 and Si2O in respective streams after separation