Abstract
Historically, the ability to effectively separate carbonate gangue from bastnaesite via flotation has frequently proven to be challenging without sacrificing significant rare earth oxide (REO) grade or recovery. However, in light of the fact that the rare earth bearing minerals often exhibit higher specific gravities than the carbonate gangue, the possibility exists that the use of gravity separation could be used to achieve such a selective separation. This however is complicated by the fact that, in cases such as this study when the liberation size is finer than 50 µm, most traditional gravity separation methods become increasingly challenging. The purposes of this study is to determine the applicability of gravity concentrators to beneficiate bastnaesite from deleterious calcite bearing flotation feed material. Via the use of a UF Falcon, it was possible to achieve rougher gravity REO recoveries approaching the upper 80% range while rejecting on the order of 30% of the total calcium. In terms of purely REO recovery, this represents a significant improvement over results obtained via a traditional Falcon in previously reported studies.
Highlights
The development of the Ultra-Fine (UF) Falcon concentrator started in earnest in 2003 in order to better treat a tantalum flotation concentrate in light of a change to a finer mineralogy
It should be noted that the sampling representativeness of the specific whole ore specimen submitted for mineralogical analysis was later determined to be poor compared to that of other materials evaluated during this study, including compared to the other whole ore samples used for the actual gravity separation testing, which made use of an alternative splitting procedure in response to this original sampling error
Project constraints impeded the ability to later perform a second round of mineral liberation analysis (MLA) characterization on properly split whole FiFgiugruere4.4G
Summary
The traditional Falcon [1] and the Knelson separators [2] helped expand this into finer applications, there remains an appetite to go finer still. The development of the Ultra-Fine (UF) Falcon concentrator started in earnest in 2003 in order to better treat a tantalum flotation concentrate in light of a change to a finer mineralogy. A single UF Falcon was able to outperform and replace the entire previous gravity circuit consisting of Mozely muti-gravity separators (Mozely MGSs) and cyclones as is pictured in Figures 1 and 2 [3,4]
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