Introductions for the Ore Flotation Solutions of the Copper Lead and Zinc

Before the Cretaceous and Jurassic when the geological of the two primeval forest area of Kalu Wei and Cassian in Indonesia has formed, there are abundant mineral resources existences  due to rich in granodiorite porphyry, hom stand rock, quartzite, concrete rocks, petrified wood, aplite, hydrothermal mineralization and other necessary materials that to form ore.

Long Teng Mining Co.,LTD of Indonesia owns a mine of copper lead and zinc, and want to seek out a mining machinery company which has advanced mining solutions in International Community to outsourcing their project due to the whole poor mining solutions in Indonesia .And after comparing with several substantial mining machinery company, Long Teng decided to outsource their project to Yan Tai Xinhai Mining Machinery Co.,LTD, which hornored for over 20 years EPC experiences.

After signing the contract, Xinhai sent their technical personnel instantly to study the constitute of the mining, and made a initial analysis of the mining that the metallic minerals mainly comprising pyrrhotite, plastic pyrite, sphalerite, iron sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite; and non-metallic minerals mainly including quartz, feldspar, followed by calcite, dolomite, sericite, chlorite and carbonaceous etc.

After further study in the laboratory, technicians of Xinhai found that the chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite of the ore are closely associated with each other, so as to the iron sphalerite and galena, even some of them are milky present in the iron sphalerite, if using crusher to crush the ore ,it is quite impossible to dissociate the row from each other in this kind of circumstance. and some of the chalcopyrite which included in the gangue will loss with the discharge of the tailings, thus will affect the recycle rate of the copper. Iron sphalerite, the main zinc mineral in the ore, always been coated with fine particles of galena, pyrrhotite, carbon, etc., and is hard to dissociated from each other. Except the whole above, the iron content of the marmatite achieves more than 10% on average, thus has great influence to the concentrate grade of the zinc.

To get higher mineral processing index for such composition ore is a huge challenge even for Xinhai which has abundant mining experiences. According to the characteristics of low content of copper ore, technicians of Xinhai conducted many flotation experiments and decided the processing solution of mixing selecting the copper and lead, separating the mixture of concentrate copper and lead, choose zinc from tailings.

Firstly, mixing selecting the copper and lead: use lime to size mixing, and when the PH reached about 7.5,then to apply Ty-1 and using zinc sulfate as the inhibitors of sphalerite and iron sphalerite, and using ethyl xanthate(70g/t), J-21(35g/t) as collectors, thus efficiently separate the zinc ore from copper and lead, and making a moderate foam viscosity to create conditions for the separation of copper and lead in the next step.

Secondly, separating the mixture of concentrate copper and lead: first of all, using CMC of postassium dichromate method to suppress lead and float copper, and adopt B butter and 2# oil as collector and frother to make stable flotation foam thus can get good copper concentrate. While the lead concentrate only can reach 4% at the same time, thus the lead concentrate belongs to crude one and still need to accord the mineral difference of the lead concentrate to use the shaking table of gravity separating to obtain lead concentrate so as to reach standard lead concentrate.

Thirdly, choose zinc from tailings: zinc concentrate can be get only when to choose the right crude zinc tailings, trial reagents including lime(3500g/t), copper sulfate(500g/t),butyl xanthate(60g/t),2# oil( 60g/t), and the ph of the flotation should reach 12-13. After the rough separation, two round of concentrate separation and a scavenging can get the lead concentrate better.

The flotation process that Xinhai choose for Longteng company has reached 24.6% of the grade and 51.7% of recycle rate of concentrate copper ,and 58.3% grade, and 87.21% of recycle rate of zinc concentrate, which exceeds much of the expectations of Longteng.

This designation of flotation process of Xinhai characterized by simple solution, short process, stable index, easy to implement and satisfy the environmental protection demands except high index of separation Xinhai has not only satisfying the Longtengs requirement but also winning good reputation in Indonesia of the mining industry.