TITLE:
Beneficiation of Synthetic Iron Ore Kaolinite Mixture Using Selective Flocculation
AUTHORS:
Lopamudra Panda, S.K. Biswal, Vilas Tathavadkar
KEYWORDS:
Selective flocculation; flocculant; iron ore; starch.
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization and Engineering,
Vol.9 No.11,
November
20,
2010
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 %.