Mineral Processing

.

.

After primary and secondary crushing, particle size of ore material need to be further reducted, which we called sizing, i.e. separation of particle sizes by screen or classification, in order to get final wanted mineral products, grinding, concentration, flotation, detwatering processes will be taken.

Concentration

Concentration is defined as the number of moles of a solute in a volume of the solution. In case of mineral processing, concentration means the increase of the percentage of the valuable mineral in the concentrate.

There are a number of ways to increase the concentration of the wanted minerals: in any particular case, the method chosen will depend on the relative physical and surface chemical properties of the mineral and the gangue.

Flotation 

Flotation is an important concentration process. This process can be used to separate any two different particles and operated by the surface chemistry of the particles.

Magnetic separation

Magnetic separation is a process in which magnetically susceptible material is extracted from a mixture using a magnetic force. This separation technique can be useful in mining iron as it is attracted to a magnet.

Dewatering

The purpose of dewatering is to remove water absorbed by the particles which increases the pulp density. This is done for a number of reasons, specifically, to enable ore handling and concentrates to be transported easily, allow further processing to occur and to dispose of the gangue. The water extracted from the ore by dewatering is recirculated for plant operations after being sent to a water treatment plant.

Check main equipments of typical ore processing plant