Ural State Mining University (Ekaterinburg, Russia)

Pelevin A. E., Professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Associate Professor, a-pelevin@yandex.ru

This article describes the research on the processing of ilmenitebearing ores and provides recommendations for increasing the yield of ilmenite concentrate. During grinding, it is essential to reduce the over-grinding of ore and gangue minerals to minimize ilmenite losses and to remove larger gangue minerals with the tailings. This can be achieved by using fine screening in closed grinding circuits. If overgrinding of ore and gangue minerals occurs, gravity separators capable of recovering very fine ilmenite particles and removing gangue mineral fines should be used instead of desliming the feed for electric separation. The yield of ilmenite concentrate can be increased by reducing losses of very fine ilmenite particles of –0.04+0.02 mm. Drum corona-electrostatic separators can recover ilmenite particles of this size, provided that the feed contains a minimal amount of dust-sized gangue minerals. Laboratory tests yielded ilmenite concentrates with a titanium dioxide content of 48 %. When processing ores from the Kuranakh and Gusevogorsk deposits, the proportion of the –0.04+0.02 mm particle size class in the ilmenite concentrate ranged from 46.26 to 52.16 %. This result was achieved by replacing the desliming operation with table concentration upstream of the electric separation. For the Bolshoy Seim deposit ore, the proportion of the –0.04+0.02 mm particle size class in the ilmenite concentrate was 27.37 %. This result was obtained through the use of fine screening in closed grinding circuits, which reduced the over-grinding of ore and gangue minerals.

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