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Flotation Circuit design for a copper uranium bearing ore (15 replies and 1 comment)
Hello Reinhold Leo, you are going to have to give us some details on what it is you have.
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Hello David
I have a typical ore mineralogy data only. %Cu - 2.0 , U308-640 ppm .
" typical ore mineralogy" = chalcopyrite + ?
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more chalcocite/bornite and lesser chalcopyrite . and for uranium the host mineral is uraninite/pitchblende.
Interms of separating copper from the uranium effectively by flotation, what particle size do I have to consider to make sure I have less uranium content in my copper concentrates?
what particle size do I have to consider to make sure I have less uranium content: your mineralogy should tell you that.
your copper should float at 95% i'll say. you need to test that. have you tested anything?
+ if you really want help you need to give technical details. you are not giving us anything here.
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Its just theoretical mineralogical data. There is no testwork that was done.
The impracticability of attempting to concentrate uranium by floating individual grains of uraninite are clear. That is why uranium is leached.
Liberation of the uraninite requires grinding to sizes below those suitable for flotation. However, there are preferential association of the uraninite with some minerals while others were free of uraninite attachment.
Uranium float to the concentrate via its carrier minerals; locking. You may need to regrind that float conc to under 20um and clean 'very well'.
It is generally, understood that U recovery in floatation is greatly influenced, by the association with copper sulphides, even at extremely fine particle size, but no recovery mechanism has yet been established as dominant.
Sometimes considerable distribution of U in the ultra- fine size fraction (-8µm) happens which suggests entrainment is a contributing factor to copper concentrate contamination.
Review this PDF on uranium, copper ore, QEMSCAN, liberation and entrainment
and https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/flotation-uranium-bearing-copper-ore
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Thank you David. This information is helpful.
if I am to design a flotation circuit to treat this type of ore, which existing operations(flotation plants) can you possibly advise me to benchmark interms of flotation parameters of copper?
This is all is can "theoretically" give you Leo. Here another paper to read and test from.
Start with a standard copper flotation at P80 150um and ultra fine float conc regrind and dilution cleaning.
It is not easy.
You have to do a lot of mineralogy to find out where the U is. Whether it is with a gangue mineral or in a copper mineral. If it is in a copper mineral, you are in trouble.
Then if it is in a gangue mineral you have to regrind the conc fine enough to remove it.
Check out Prominent Hill. They had to get the rougher conc to 12 um k80 to get the U down to marketable levels.
Prominent Hill (your benchmark) work was done by the people at http://www.basemetlabs.com/
Anybody else wants to jump-in?
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here is an example of test conditions Leo
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Thank you. I will keep you posted on my progress with this theoretical exercise.
Reinhold, David is correct, the secret so to speak, with any flotation is liberation. Whatever grind it takes to do this, and it can take much time doing grinding tests, screen analysis, looking under the microscope and could even take some electron microscope work. You get the minerals separated and you are well on your way.
Leo, if you have specific questions, please ask. Your general approach should be to start with a 150 um grind on which you do a 2 dimension liberation study.
For optimum rougher flotation recovery, you want your target mineral to be around 55% liberated. That size becomes your target P80 for flotation tests. Finer is a waste.
On your cleaner feed circuit stream, you want to regrind until those are 95% liberated. This will allow for maximum concentrate quality.
See and example https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/molybdenum-grind-size-liberation-vs-collector-dosage-for-recovery-by-flotation
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Thank you David. I am reading all the materials you have recommended . If I have any questions, I will let you know.
I am struggling with benchmarking copper recoveries of operations with a similar type of ore. Please help