Mineralogical and Chemical Characterization of Low Grade Iron Ore Fines from Barsua Area, Eastern India with Implications on Beneficiation and Waste Utilization

Abstract

The consumption of iron ore has increased rapidly over the past decade due to the tremendous growth of iron and steel industry. The depletion of high grade iron ore resources make it inevitable to utilize the existing low grade iron ores/fines/tailings with effective beneficiation to meet the present specification and demand. Enormous amounts of fines are produced both from the natural geological process as well during the mechanized mining operations which is hitherto in unknown resource present in the form of waste. Beneficiation and utilization of these fines/tailings still remains a challenging task. In order to find out the effective way of utilization of these fines, an in-depth characterization study is essential. A detailed insight into the different mineralogical attributes involving microscopic SEM-EDX, EPMA, XRD, FTIR, TGA, physical and chemical characterization are undertaken on the Barsua iron ores fines. These studies revealed that hematite and goethite are the major iron bearing minerals with gibbsite, kaolinite and quartz present as gangue that makes up the deleterious Al and Si content. Traces of magnetite is also observed along with martite. The liberation size of the sample is found to be below 150 μm. The bulk chemical composition shows around 57.67% Fe, 6.29% Al2O3, 3.52% SiO2 and 6.93% LOI. Based on the detailed characterization, possible routes of beneficiation of the iron ore fines are discussed.