Development and Performance of a New Separator for the Dry Gravity Separation of Fines

摘要

The big challenge at present and in the future is the economization of resources. This is applied for the whole industry but particularly in fields of mineral processing. The most important resources are energy and water. The shortage and price advance of energy is worldwide noticeable whereas the shortage of water is regionally limited at present. However due to the increasing wodd population,associated with a rising standard of living, water will become more and more important. Studies of the Unesco from 2001 indicate that the total water consumption raised seven times since the last 100years at a growth of population of just three times. (UNESCO-Currier, 1012001). This trend is going to be increased. While today more than 90 % of the humanity has access to clean water, in 2050 just about 50 % will be in the same situation.These figures indicate the importance of a gentle handling with the resource water. Further more the disposal of fine products, containing most of the water, is an environmental concern and in the future the mining and processing of raw materials will become important and necessary in desert,arid or permafrost areas. In these areas just efficient dry cleaning technologies will allow an economical beneficiation or better enable the processing at all.Most of the separation technologies with high throughput rates in mineral processing are based on wet processes. This applies especially for the separation of fines. Though there are some dry technologies available for the separation of coarse materials, like pneumatic gravity separation [air jigs and air tables], magnetic separation and not least sensor based sorters. Dry separation of fines is bounded mostly on cost intensive and low throughput technologies.The pneumatic separation undergoes at present a renaissance, mainly due to the development of the all air jig by the German supplier Allmineral. This newly developed sorting device yields good results in the separation of coarse to medium size material.All these facts and figures show the potential and motivation for developing an efficient dry separation device for fines.The following article delineates the development, performance and chance of a new dry separation technology for fines.