Iron, copper, and rare earth minerals beneficiation in an IOCG type deposit

Abstract

ABSTRACT The sample of the Sineqan mine (Arak, Iran), containing 16.5% Fe, 0.13% Cu, 475 ppm Ce, 446 ppm La, and 134 ppm Nd, was characterised and processed to investigate the possibility of separating iron, copper, and REE minerals. Microscopic studies showed that the main minerals in the sample include magnetite, hematite, goethite, specularite, pyrite, and chalcopyrite, while the gangue minerals consist of quartz, clay minerals, and carbonate minerals. The results of heavy liquid studies using Bromoform showed that by reducing the particle size from 1180 to 300 micrometre, 76.6% of iron and 72.76% of copper went into the heavy section, while 77.9% of REEs entered the light section. The magnetic separation experiments revealed that higher magnetic field intensity increased the recovery of iron, copper, and REEs with no separation between them. In summary, the results indicate that REEs are primarily present in the light section due to their association with sphene silicate mineral, and gravity separation demonstrated superior performance in terms of both recovery and selectivity. The results of this research are significant for the processing of iron oxide-type deposits that contain copper and REEs.