Copper sulfide flotation process

 Copper sulphide ore occupies an important position in China's copper ore resources, because of its relative ease of separation and low comprehensive cost of beneficiation, it has become the mainstream of copper ore beneficiation. The flotation process is the core method of copper sulphide ore beneficiation, which is aimed at efficiently separating copper minerals and veinstone minerals to achieve copper enrichment.

Types of flotation process

 Grinding - Flotation Process

 Grinding is an important pre-step of flotation, and the fineness of grinding has a significant impact on the selection index. In this process, the raw copper sulphide ore is ground in one stage, and when the grinding fineness reaches 50-60% of -200 mesh, the copper minerals are basically dissociated from the monomer, and then enter the flotation stage. After roughing, sweeping and one to three times selection, it can obtain better flotation index. This process is suitable for processing ores with coarse and uniform copper mineral embedded particle size, loose combination with veins and smooth and flat contact edges. Its significant features are simple process, low cost of beneficiation, so it is widely used in small and medium-sized copper processing plant.

One stage grinding - flotation - coarse concentrate regrinding process

 In the rough concentrate obtained from partial copper sulphide flotation, there are a large number of fine-grained porphyry-quartz congeners. In order to improve the grade and metal recovery of the copper concentrate, regrinding of the crude concentrate is required to enhance the dissociation of monomers. The raw ore is ground in one stage, and the fineness of grinding reaches 40% - 70% at -200 mesh. After roughing and sweeping to remove a large amount of tailings, the coarse concentrate is regrinded, followed by two to three selections to obtain the final copper concentrate. This process is suitable for single sulphide ores or copper-molybdenum ores of porphyry copper ores. When the original ore grade is low and the processing capacity is large, it can harvest better beneficiation indexes and economic benefits, and due to the regrinding of coarse concentrate, the particle size becomes fine, the copper minerals and veinstone minerals and pyrite monomer dissociation degree is good, and the quality of flotation concentrate is high.

Two-stage grinding - two-stage (one-stage) flotation process

 For the unevenly distributed copper sulphide ores, in order to promote the dissociation of most of the copper minerals, it is necessary to grind the ores finer, usually the fineness of grinding to - 200 mesh is about 80% or even finer, and two-stage milling is often used at this time. After the ore is roughly ground in the first stage, a part of coarse-grained copper minerals can be flotation, this part of the copper concentrate with higher grade, can be directly used as concentrate, or into the final one-time selection, can also be combined with the concentrate obtained from flotation after two-stage milling for the final concentrate. This process adheres to the principle of early recovery, which can greatly improve the recovery rate of the target minerals, and is better than one-stage grinding in terms of grinding efficiency and prevention of over-crushing of copper minerals, and is often adopted by large and medium-sized copper ore dressing plants.

flotation chemicals system

 Capture agent

 Copper sulphide flotation collectors are of various types. Flavonoid type of trapping agent is widely used, strong trapping power, but poor selectivity, a variety of metal sulphide minerals have trapping effect. In the copper sulfide minerals, the role of pyroxene, copper blue, porphyry, chalcopyrite and chalcopyrite and yellow medicine is weakened in order. The selectivity of thiamine ester traps is better than that of yellow and black drugs, but the cost is higher. In practice, a combination of trappers is often used, combining selectivity and trapping capacity, and new types of highly selective trappers, such as BK901h, EMZ-91, CSU31, etc., have also been developed.

 Inhibitors

 Commonly used inorganic inhibitors include lime, cyanide, sulphite and so on. Lime can be used as pyrite inhibitor and pH adjuster, which can reduce the floatability of pyrite, precipitate heavy metal ions in the slurry, reduce the consumption of chemicals and inhibit copper minerals. Cyanide can effectively inhibit pyrite, but also inhibit sphalerite. In the flotation of complex copper sulphide minerals, dichromate and sodium sulphite can inhibit galena. Compared with inorganic inhibitors, organic inhibitors have the advantages of safety and environmental protection, strong selectivity and better effect in the flotation of complex copper sulfide minerals.

Media Conditioner

Lime is a common media conditioner, with a dosage of 0.5 - 3 kg/tonne. It can adjust the pulp pH, precipitate heavy metal ions, reduce the consumption of chemicals and inhibition of copper minerals, and the inhibition of pyrite is stronger than caustic soda and soda, which is conducive to improving the grade of copper ore flotation concentrate.

Copper sulfide flotation process needs to be based on the nature of the ore, the scientific selection of the process and pharmaceutical system, in order to achieve high efficiency separation, improve the recovery rate of copper resources and economic benefits.