Abstract: Panxi region is the largest production area of vanadium titanomagnetite in China.In addition to the primary elements such as iron,vanadium and titanium,vanadium titanomagnetite is also accompanied by 60 million tons of sulfur resource and 900 000 tons of cobalt resource,which has high industrial utilization value.At present,the processing flowsheet of vanadium titanium magnetite ore in industry is "stage grinding-low intensity magnetic separation of iron-high intensity magnetic separation of titanium from iron tailings-desulfurization of titanium concentrates-flotation of ilmenite" to get products including iron concentrate,titanium concentrate and sulfur (cobalt) concentrate.The recovery of sulfur-cobalt concentrate primarily happens in the titanium concentrates desulfurization stage.Because the cobalt grade is less than 0.3%,the product is sold as sulfur-cobalt concentrate when the market price of cobalt is high,while as sulfur concentrate when the market price of cobalt is low,leading to the significant waste of cobalt resources.In this work,authors attempted to recover sulfur and cobalt by flotation before the low intensity magnetic separation,based on the principle of early recovery and fast recovery.In the laboratory,the vanadium titanomagnetite ore was ground to 45% passing 0.074 mm,and the flotation reagents include copper sulfate of 250 g/t,isoprene xanthate of 150 g/t,3# foaming agent of 30 g/t.A product with yield of 14.33%,sulfur grade of 3.11%,cobalt grade of 0.06%,nickel grade of 0.03%,copper grade of 0.1%,sulfur recovery rate of 68.14%,cobalt recovery rate of 35.12%,nickel recovery rate of 47.23% and copper recovery rate of 43.12% was achieved after one roughing flotation.The integrated ball grinding-flotation machine and shallow tank rapid flotation machine were developed for the pre-flotation recovery of sulfur and cobalt from the raw ore of vanadium titanomagnetite.Experimental results indicated that the shallow tank rapid flotation machine was promising for the early and fast recovery of sulfur and cobalt before the low intensity magnetic separation.

Key words: vanadium titanium magnetite,flotation,cobalt,pyrrhotite,shallow tank rapid flotation machine