Attritioner Scrubber Performance Evaluation

摘要

In some deposits valuable heavy mineral quality is poor due to increased mineral surface coatingsrnfrom higher slimes and more competent sand orebodies. Mineral surface coating can include silicarnor aluminium rich clay minerals and iron based minerals that render the fi nal product qualityrnoff-specifi cation, in this case specifi cally ilmenite and zircon.rnConventional physical benefi ciation processes such as magnetic separation, electrostatic separationrnand gravity separation are not able to remove these surface coatings. Surface dependent separationrntechniques such as electrostatic separators are affected by these coatings which hinders the rejectionrnof non-valuable mineral from product. Attrition scrubbing is the most commonly used technique tornreduce surface coatings, using mechanically induced particle to particle interaction, abrasion andrnshearing.rnIn many cases it is a challenge to measure the surface removal effi ciency of these scrubbing units.rnElemental analysis techniques (ie X-ray fl ourescence) (XRF) in a multi mineral environment are unablernto measure surface impurity reduction with enough precision. Mineralogical analysis (in this casernQemscan?) has constraints in terms of sample preparation with highly coated particles being pluckedrnout during block polishing. This paper suggests a combination of laboratory separation techniquesrncoupled with elemental analysis to evaluate the surface removal effi ciency. Three different types ofrnfeed materials were used to analyse the effi ciency of surface removal using production attritionerrnscrubbers. This approach relates the downstream benefi ciation plant’s expected performance withrnthat of the attrition scrubber’s scrubbing effi ciency.