Ore Concentration Department, Scientific and Engineering Development and Ecological Safety Office, JSC “Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company”, Zapolyarny, Russia:

S. V. Likhacheva, Leading Specialist, e-mail: LikhachevaSV@kolagmk.ru

Geological Institute of Kola Science Center of Russian Academy of Sciences, Apatity, Russia:

Yu. N. Neradovskiy, Leading Researcher

This article considers the types of losses of nickel with flotation tailings. There is shown, that losses of nickel with concentration tailings are constant and make up 20–25% of total content in ore. These losses are formed from opened sulphides’ grains, natural joints and anthropogenic formations. Nickel is included there in silicate, sulphide and oxide forms. In authors’ opinion, 45% of losses contain objective irreversible losses, substantiated by nickel inclusion into the composition of lattices of various rock-forming minerals. Content of nickel admixtures in main rock-forming mineral (serpentine) is not large. However, at the expense of mass, this mineral contains ~10% of these admixtures. The rest 55% are connected with main ore mineral — pentlandite, which explains the possibility of their decreasing. In author's opinion, losses of pyrrhotine with concentration tailings are one of important factors of Pechenga ingrained ores' concentration process. The part of released pyrrhotine grains in tailings is from 60% to 90% of its content in discharges, which corresponds about its incomplete flotation. Calculations of nickel balance on mineral phases corresponds that losses of nickel in isomorphous form with pyrrhotine are ~10% in average. However, they become significantly increased due to the pentlandite admixtures in pyrrhotine. Flocculation of pyrrhotine particles by magnetite is one of the reasons of its losses. Magnetic nickel-bearing pyrrhotine is actively blocked by slag particles of magnetite. Together with pentlandite joints, this pyrrhotine is depressed in the sandy part of flotation products. Under-extraction of pentlandite and aggregation processes of slime particles also belong to anthropogenic factors. Taking into account the modern concentration technologies, solving of concentration tailings exhaustion problem is problematic and requires some non-traditional technological solutions, such as demagnetization of ferromagnetic minerals or destruction of floccules by ultra-sound and other methods.

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