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As the lightest metal element known, lithium has strong metal activity and is widely used in nuclear industry, battery industry, aerospace and other important industries. Lepidolite is a relatively common lithium mineral and one of the important resources for extracting lithium. As the demand for lithium in new energy vehicles and energy storage industries increases year by year, efficient recovery of lepidolite is imperative.
At present, the beneficiation method of lepidolite is mainly flotation technology. During the beneficiation process, lepidolite will go through crushing, grinding and other processes. After these treatment, some ores will have problems of over-crushing and over-grinding, which in turn will produce slime. There are also some slimes in the lepidolite raw ore, which will adhere to the mineral surface and affect the recovery of the concentrate, which has a greater impact on the flotation index. Therefore, the general concentrator will adopt the technological process of desliming flotation lepidolite. Since the yield of slime products accounts for about 15% of the raw ore in beneficiation, excessive slime will reduce the recovery rate of lepidolite, resulting in waste of lepidolite ore. This article will introduce you a lepidolite flotation technology without desliming.
Use the table of contents below to navigate through the guide:
1. Coarse grinding: After the lepidolite raw ore is crushed and screened, the product on the screen is sent to a ball mill for grinding.
2. Coarse separation: The ground product and the under-screen product are sent to the flotation machine for flotation. The ore concentration is kept at 30%-40%, and the pH value of the slurry is kept within the range of 6.5-7.5. Inhibitors, collectors and polymer flocculants are added to the pulp, and after being fully mixed with the pulp, sorting is carried out to obtain rougher concentrates and rougher tailings. Due to the action of the collector in the pulp, the amount of foam is relatively large, which affects the flotation effect. Polymer flocculants can be added to the pulp to reduce the amount of foam. The flocculant can also stabilize the foam, and a large amount of mud and impurities on the foam will settle and separate from the foam, and then selectively flocculate the lepidolite. Afterwards, under the action of the collector, the flocculent small groups composed of lepidolite are floated out.
3. Sweeping: After the roughing tailings are fully mixed with the collector, air is blown to scrape off the foam to obtain the scavenging foam product and the scavenging tailings. The swept foam product can be returned to the roughing process for roughing again.
The roughing concentrate is that after the inhibitor is fully mixed, the lepidolite concentrate can be obtained by inflating and scraping the foam. Featured assignments can be divided into two segments.
1. One-time separation: the rougher concentrate is sent to the first-time selection flotation operation, after the inhibitor is added and stirred well, it is inflated and scraped to obtain a first-time selection foam product and a first-time middling product, and the middling product is sent to the roughing process Process again.
2. Second-time separation: The first-stage beneficiation foam product is sent to the second-stage beneficiation flotation machine for flotation. After stirring and mixing fully, it is inflated and scraped to obtain lepidolite concentrate and secondary medium ore products. The mid-mineral products produced by the second beneficiation are sent to the first beneficiation operation for processing.
The above content is the process flow of lepidolite flotation without desliming. The polymer inhibitor polyacrylamide or other polymers used in flotation. The inhibitor can be composed of water glass and sodium hexametaphosphate in a certain mass ratio. Collectors can be cocamine and emulsified oleic acid.
This non-desliming lepidolite flotation technology is mainly based on the good buoyancy of lepidolite in a wide pH range, and the use of inhibitors, collectors, and selective polymer flocculants. Combination, using the flocculation flotation method to complete the flotation without desliming under the condition of a simple sorting process. After treatment, the grade of lepidolite concentrate is improved, and the recovery rate of lithium is also further improved, which well solves the defect of low recovery rate of lepidolite in lepidolite desliming and separation process. Xinhai Mining can tailor lepidolite flotation process plan and efficient mineral processing equipment for you. Welcome to consult the latest lithium mineral processing process and equipment.
