Welcome to Metal Mine! Today is Share:
×

扫码分享

Metal Mine ›› 2021, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (03): 124-129.

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Recovery of Lithium from a Granite Type Spodumene by Gravity-color-flotation

LIU Guangxue,PENG Tuaner,LIU Lei,LI Shulei   

  1. 1. Zhengzhou Institute of Multipurpose Utilization of Mineral Resources, CAGS, Zhengzhou 450006, China; 2. Key Laboratory for Polymetallic Ores' Evaluation and Utilization, MNR, Zhengzhou 450006, China; 3. National Engineering Research Center of Coal Preparation and Purification, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
  • Online:2021-03-15 Published:2021-03-17

Abstract: The consumption of lithium resources in China is increasing by years. The grade of domestic ore-type lithium resources is low, and the development of brine type lithium resources is difficult. The lithium concentrate products can not meet the domestic production needs. A foreign spodumene jigging middling ore was purchased as an additional product of imported lithium concentrate. In order to explore its beneficiation process, the beneficiation test was carried out based on the research results of ore properties using gravity-color- flotation combination process. The results showed that: ① The content of Li2O in the sample is 3.60%. The main valuable minerals are spodumene, and the main gangue minerals are feldspar, quartz and mica. The granularity of spodumene is more than 1 mm, and the granularity of gangue and aggregate is more than 2 mm. ② When the density of heavy liquid is 2.85 g/cm3, spodumene concentrate with Li2O content greater than 5.5% can be obtained with a higher recovery rate. The predicted results of two-stage continuous heavy medium cyclone separation obtained by computer simulation are in good agreement with the experiment results, and the industrial promotion feasibility is high. ③ The coarse raw material beyond 0.5 mm adopts the process of screening classification and heavy suspension separation. Under the condition of medium density of 2.70 g/cm3, the heavy liquid tailings with yield of 21.76% and Li2O grade of 0.18% can be discarded. The metal loss of Li2O in the heavy liquid tailings is only 1.09%. ④ After the separation of heavy liquid concentrate by color separator, the grade of Li2O was increased from 5.73% to 6.18%, the concentrate quality was improved by one grade, and the recovery rate of Li2O was as high as 89.23%. ⑤ Color-separation tailings, heavy liquid middlings and ores below 0.5 mm were regarded as mixed middlings with the Li2O grade up to 2%~3.57%, a flotation concentrate with Li2O grade of 6.53% and Li2O operation recovery of 91.51% was finally obtained through "one roughing, two cleaning and two scavenging" with self-developed EL as spodumene flotation collector. The whole process test separation index is excellent, which effectively reduce the cost of grinding and has a certain value of engineering promotion and application.

Key words: spodumene, heavy media dressing, color sorting, flotation