A Introduction of Flotating Process about Copper-Lead-Zinc

The geology of the region was formed before the time of Cretaceous and Jurassic in Earl Calloway and Cassian, two original forest area, Indonesia. Due to being rich in a variety of mining, granite diorite porphyry, Angle of rock, quartzite, coagulation earth rock, silicified wood, aplite and hydrothermal metallogenic essential substances, so the mineral resources are particularly abundant.

Longteng Co., LTD have a mine with copper, lead, Zinc and more in Indonesia. Here, because of the relatively backward technology of the mining process in the mineral industry, Longteng would like to cooperate with a mining machinery company proficient in advancing ore process technology and outsource the whole project. After communicating with several powerful mining machinery companyLongteng decided to choose Xinhai Mining Machinery company with over two decades of experience of mineral process EPC.

Upon signing the contract, Xinhai send some technicians on mission to take sample to do a study and analysis on the mineral composition, and they found that the main elements are pyrite, binding iron sphalerite, galena, pyrite, sphalerite, chalcopyrite and the nonmetal minerals are mainly quartz, feldspar, followed by calcite, dolomite, sericite, chlorite and carbon, etc.

The technicians did a further study and found that in this mine there are chalcopyrite, magnetite, sphalerite, galena, which existed in a situation of symbiotic relationship, and part of them existed in marmatite with a milky state. For that matter, crushing cannot finish the work to separate the mine directly. Part of chalcopyrite included in the gangue particles, so it might lose much along with the tailings discharging, which caused a big effect on the copper recovery rate. Iron sphalerite is the main zinc mineral including fine grain of Galena, pyrrhotite, carbon, etc. So it is difficult to achieve monomer dissociation. In addition to the iron content of marmatite is more than 10% on average, which much affects the zinc concentrate grade.

For this kind of complex mine, the target of achieving higher mineral processing index cannot be reached. Even for Xinhai company, it was also a big challenge. Ultimately technicians determined to adopt the solution of copper lead mix-mining flotation, mixed concentrate separation of copper and lead, and zinc tailings on the basis of low copper content according to many times of mining flotation test. A detailed introduction of mining flotation process designed by Xinhai company is as follows.

1. Copper lead mix-mining flotation With the condition of mixing slime slurry , the PH reaching around 7.5, having the Ty – 1 and zinc sulfate as inhibitors of sphalerite, iron sphalerite, having ethyl xanthate (70 g/t), J – 21 (35 g/t) as a collector, the zinc, lead and copper were separated efficiently and keeping the foam viscosity moderate to create conditions for the next step of separating copper and lead.

2.Separation of Copper and Lead With the method of CMC – potassium dichromate to floating copper and having B butter and 2# as collector and frother, and keeping mining flotation foam stability, copper concentrate could be processed efficiently, but the lead concentrate grade was only about 4%, belonging to the course lead concentrate. In order to reach a higher index of lead concentrate, gravity separating, shaking table work was be adopted to achieve lead concentrate according to the mineral density differences in lead concentrate.

3. Zinc tailings With the condition of having lime (3500 g/t), copper sulfate (500 g/t), butyl xanthate (60 g/t),2# oil (60 g/t) as reagents and the floating PH between 12-13,zinc coating processing from the tailings was operated to get zinc concentrate. After the coating work, two times of concentrating and one time of scavenging was finished to get better lead concentrate.

With the mining flotation process designed by Xinhai, the index was beyond Longteng prediction. Finally, the result was great. the copper concentrate grade 24.06%, recovery rate 51.70%, and lead concentrate grade of 58.3%, the recovery rate of 89.24%, zinc concentrate grade was 47.08%, the recovery rate of 87.21%.

Besides higher process index, this floating process also has many characteristics, such as simple process, short process, stable indicators and so on. It was easy to implement and meet environmental requirements. Xinhai company not only did an excellent service for Longteng company but also won a good reputation for his own in Indonesia through this EPC service project.