Abstract: In light of the tailings characters in No.1 tailing reservoir of Fankou Lead-Zinc Mine, the fine screening at 0.074mm and tabling separation were used to discard 55% of the tailings so as reduce the downstream grinding and flotation cost and meanwhile to enrich the valuable elements such as lead, zinc, silver, gallium, germanium, etc. The flotation condition of lead -zinc minerals was improved by the control of the dosage and time of sodium sulfide addition. All this has resulted in a new process for recovering comprehensively lead and zinc from the lead-zinc tailings. The pilot test results show that a lead-zinc bulk concentrate containing 17.83% lead and 29.60% zinc and having a lead recovery of 71.82% and zinc recovery of 85.46% can be obtained from the tailings by fine screening-classification, gravity separation and flotation.

Key words: Lead-zinc tailings, Gravity separation, Flotation