Recovery of Chromite Values from Plant Tailings by Gravity Concentration

Sunil Kumar Tripathy, Y. Ramamurthy, Veerendra Singh

Research & Development Division, Tata Steel,Jamshedpur, INDIA – 831001.

DOI: 10.4236/jmmce.2011.101002                

Abstract

Large tonnages of chromite tailing were discarded during processing of chromite ore in the conventional circuit. A typical chromite plant tailing was treated in wilfley table for the recovery of chromite values. Optimisation study was carried out for the process parameters of wilfley table using empirical models, developed from the experimental data. It was found that grade and recovery (% Cr₂O₃) in the concentrate fraction majorly depended on the variation of deck tilt angle. To achieve high grade (>45%) with acceptable recovery (>40%), set of optimisation condition of parameters have derived which resulted large quantity of wash water (>5lpm of flow rate) is necessary. Validation of the empirical models were done with set of tests which resulted good agreement with the predict values (R2 is 0.96 and 0.99 for the grade and recovery respectively).

Keywords

Chromite Plant Tailing, Beneficiation, Wilfley Table, Modeling, Processoptimisation.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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