An Investigation for Recovering Zinc and Iron from Gossan

Abstract

In recent years, recovering zinc from low grade oxidized zinc ore has been a matter of discussion. In this paper, the investigation for recovering zinc and iron from gossan ores was carried out. In generally, the conventional physical separation methods, such as flotation, gravity separation and magnetic separation, were used to treat the low grade ore, and flotation is the most commonly used method for beneficiation and pretreatment of oxidized zinc minerals. However, gravity separation and magnetic separation are used to deal with the gossan ores because of the special zinc oxide ore bearing iron 40.2% in this study. The effects of grinding fineness and magnetic intensity were investigated, respectively. The results show that the grade of zinc and iron increase slightly, and the best result is that the grade of zinc and iron are 13.35% and 40.25%, the recovery of zinc and iron are 53.45% and 52.19%.