Beneficiation of Synthetic Iron Ore Kaolinite Mixture Using Selective Flocculation

Abstract

High demand of steel necessitates the use of low and lean grade iron ores by beneficiating them. However the fines, slimes and tailings generated in the process of beneficiating these low grade iron ores contains good amount of iron values. These iron values can be recovered by further beneficiating the fines, slimes and tailing by selective flocculation, which is defined as the selective agglomeration of iron ore particles using flocculant. In the present study an attempt has been taken to study the applicability of selective flocculation to Indian iron ore using corn starch as flocculant. A detail mineralogical and chemical characterization of iron ore and kaolinite were performed; in addition to this the flocculant was characterized by FTIR which gives an idea about the functional groups present in the flocculant. Different experiments were performed to optimize the operating parameters of the selective flocculation process. It was observed that product grade and recovery was strongly affected by pH of slurry and solid concentration compared to the flocculant dose. It was also found that the iron value can be upgraded to 63-66.9 % from the feed iron value of 37.65-55.33 % with the recovery of 63-90 %.