RECOVERY OF PENTLANDITE AND CHALCOPYRITE FROM TAILINGS BY BI-CYCLONE POWERFUL FLOTATION COLUMN

摘要

In China a great lot of fine mineral was remained in the tailings due to technical reason. The aimrnof this paper is to study the recovery of fine pentlandite and chalcopyrite from a tailing using bicyclonernpowerful flotation column. The grade of nickel and copper in the tailing is 0.29 per cent andrn0.19 per cent respectively. The column flotation test shows that the most important factors are thernreagent condition and the feed concentration. The adequate reagent is PN-405, the dosage of which isrndecided by the remained reagent of the feed. The optimal feed concentrate is between 15 per cent andrn16 per cent. It is demonstrated that the recovery of nickel and copper in the concentrate is 37.27 perrncent and 26.55 per cent, with the concentrate grade of 1.23 per cent and 0.57 per cent respectively.rnThe liberation degree of the feed, concentrate and tailing is determined. The results show that thernnickel sulfide mostly exists as individual in the concentrate and the nickel sulfide locked with ganguernis basically remained in the tailing; about 50 per cent of the copper sulfide exists as individual in thernconcentrate and the copper sulfide remained in the tailing is mostly locked with gangue. The averagernparticle size of nickel sulfide in the concentrate is about 40 μm, and over 38 per cent of them arernfiner than 8 μm, while that of copper sulfide is about 30 μm, and over 43 per cent of them are finerrnthan 8 μm. The dissemination size of the copper sulfide is finer than that of the nickel sulfide in thernfeed, and the former is harder to recover than the latter. It is concluded that the bi-cyclone powerfulrnflotation column is very effective and useful for recovery of the fine minerals from tailings.