01. Tungsten minerals and their floatability
Tungsten minerals with industrial value mainly include scheelite and wolframite. The beneficiation methods of tungsten ores mainly include gravity separation, magnetic separation, spot separation and flotation. Flotation is commonly used for the recovery of fine scheelite, WOLFRAMITE SLIME and symbiotic sulfide ore.
02. Flotation process of tungsten ore
Ⅰ. Flotation machine process of Scheelite
Scheelite Flotation generally requires fine grinding to fully dissociate the mineral monomer; If the ore contains sulfide, xanthate can be used to float out in advance; If the sulfide content is small, scheelite and sulfide can be floated out with oleic acid, and then the mixed concentrate can be separated in weak acid medium. The effective collector of tungsten minerals is also the collector of gangue minerals (such as calcite), so it is necessary to accurately control the dosage of agent; Excessive collectors will form sticky and stable foam, which will affect the selection operation.
Soft water is generally used for Scheelite Flotation, with good selectivity and low reagent consumption. The medium regulator is generally Na2CO3, and the pH is adjusted to 9 ~ 10.5; When the pH must be kept at 11 or higher, sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate shall be mixed to prevent precipitation of oleic acid with calcium and magnesium. The stirring of slurry before flotation is very important. When sulfide is not pre floated before Scheelite Flotation, some concentrators add sodium carbonate, water glass and other gangue inhibitors to the ball mill, some use two stirring tanks and only add some collectors, and others add all reagents to one stirring tank.
The coarse concentrate of scheelite ore obtained by gravity separation or flotation must be cleaned to separate it from sulfide and alkaline earth metal minerals.
Ⅱ. Flotation process of wolframite
The beneficiation treatment of WOLFRAMITE SLIME in China mainly includes strong magnetic flotation, centrifuge flotation, shaking table gravity separation and so on.
(1) Strong magnetic flotation process: wolframite has weak magnetism. Firstly, it is pre enriched by wet strong magnetic separator, and the sulfide minerals are floatated from the magnetic separation concentrate with xanthate collector, and then the wolframite is collected by inhibiting gangue and benzylarsonic acid with glass and sodium fluorosilicate. The process flow is simple, the equipment investment is saved, the cost is low and the economic benefit is remarkable.
(2) Centrifuge flotation process: the cost of tungsten fine mud roughing by centrifuge is lower than that of flotation roughing. The feeding generally does not need grading candidates, and the processing capacity is large, 10 μ M can also be recycled and most gangue can be discarded. The concentrate grade and recovery are greatly improved by flotation.
The composition of a tungsten ore is relatively simple, the main useful mineral is wolframite, and the gangue is mainly quartz. The wolframite fine slime containing 30.38% of WO3 is pre enriched by wet high-intensity magnetic separator by magnetic flotation process. The wolframite concentrate is collected by benzylarsonic acid. The wolframite concentrate contains 347.8% of WO3 and the recovery rate of WO3 operation is 72.8%.
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