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Manganese is used in many fields such as metallurgy, machinery, and fire protection. There are two common types of manganese ore, one is manganese oxide and the other is manganese carbonate. Manganese carbonate is the main source of manganese, but it has been mined for many years and is easy to select. It is becoming less and less, mostly hard-to-select manganese carbonate with embedded particle size. In addition, it has a high calcium and magnesium carbonate content. The embedded relationship between manganese minerals and other gangue minerals is complex, and there are many types of minerals. Ore is easily muddied and difficult to sort.
Currently, the commonly used methods for selecting manganese carbonate include washing, gravity separation, magnetic separation, flotation and leaching. Let’s find out together below!
Use the table of contents below to navigate through the guide:
Ore washing refers to the process of cleaning and removing slime on the surface of ore under the action of hydraulic or mechanical force. Most of them are preparatory work before crushing or sorting, and their main purpose is to improve the grade of the selected lump ore and reduce the impact of sludge on subsequent operations. However, manganese carbonate ore is brittle and easy to muddy and is symbiotic with clay minerals. The ore grade needs to be improved through washing first.
Commonly used washing equipment in concentrators include hydraulic washing screens, vibrating screens, cylindrical washing machines and trough washing machines.
Gravity separation is a technical means to achieve density separation based on the different densities of mineral particles and their different falling speeds in the medium. Generally, manganese carbonate minerals have a higher density, while their associated gangue minerals have a lower density, and can be separated by gravity separation. But sometimes, a single gravity separation process cannot obtain satisfactory separation indicators, and it is often used in combination with other processes, such as gravity separation-magnetic separation, gravity separation-flotation combined processes, etc.
Commonly used gravity separation equipment in concentrators mainly include heavy media separators, shakers, jigs, chutes, cyclones and centrifuges.
Manganese carbonate ore is a weakly magnetic mineral, and most of the associated gangue is nonmagnetic silicate minerals. Therefore, strong magnetic separation is an important means to separate and enrich manganese carbonate. Magnetic separation occupies a small area and has low energy consumption. It is a low-cost mineral processing method, and the magnetic separation process is economical and environmentally friendly. Magnetic separation is widely used in mineral processing, but it is subject to environmental restrictions, its scope of action is limited, and it is not suitable for processing fine-grained minerals.
Commonly used magnetic separation equipment in concentrators include dry magnetic separators, wet magnetic separators and high gradient magnetic separators.
Manganese carbonate ore has more associated gangue, complex composition, and finer particle size. The advantages of the flotation method in processing fine-grained manganese carbonate ore are high enrichment efficiency and strong adaptability; the disadvantages are high investment cost, easy cause of environmental pollution, and high process parameter requirements. Generally, positive flotation is used to treat ore, and combined reagents are often used for chemical selection.
Commonly used flotation equipment in manganese carbonate concentrators include inflatable agitation flotation machines and mechanical agitation flotation machines. The former equipment includes XCF type and KYF type; the latter equipment includes SF type, JJF type and BF type.
The leaching method mainly changes the properties of mineral materials through chemical means, thereby comprehensively recycling minerals. Leaching methods mainly include pre-baking leaching, direct acid leaching and microbial leaching.
1. Pre-baking leaching: mainly for the recovery of high-priced manganese resources. The principle is to reduce high-priced manganese to low-priced manganese, so that the manganese element is recovered in the form of manganese ions during the leaching process;
2. Direct acid leaching method: It is a process in which acid is directly applied to manganese carbonate ore, thereby leaching manganese. However, attention should be paid to the influence of various conditions (reaction temperature, liquid-to-solid ratio, leaching time, stirring intensity, etc.) during the leaching process;
3. Microbial leaching: The bacterial leaching method is used, using bacteria to directly or indirectly act on the target mineral components, thereby improving the recovery effect of the target minerals.
The above is an introduction to the commonly used beneficiation methods of manganese carbonate. However, as ore becomes more and more refined and difficult to be beneficiated, a single beneficiation method can no longer meet the beneficiation conditions. Therefore, a combined method is often used for beneficiation. So the combined method How to choose and use the process depends on the ore properties. The mineral processing test and analysis should be conducted first. Through analysis and design of a suitable manganese carbonate mineral processing process, the ideal return on investment can be achieved and qualified concentrate can be obtained.
