Yunnan Lead-zinc Sulfide Ore Beneficiation Pilot Study

Lead-zinc polymetallic sulfide ore composition is extremely complex,the content of valuable constituent have a wide range of fluctuation and various constitutions,and the diseminated particle size changes greatly,researches on this kind of ore are important in non-ferrous metal processing.Lead-zinc polymetallic sulfide ore in Yunnan is mainly composed of lead and zinc,in which the valuable metal ore are galena,sphalerite,chalcopyrite and silver-containing minerals,the content of pyrite is low.The main gangues are quartz,marble,dolomite, kaolinite and little mica.In order to recover the target mineral efficiently,according to the nature of the mine, we adopt the flotation,the principle flowsheet is:partially bulk floation.In another word is that:copper and lead mixed flotation,then float zinc,at last separate the copper and lead from the copper-lead mixed concentrate.The grind fineness is 70%0.074mm,in this process we choose lime to adjust the pH,use the combined reagent as zinc depressor which is composed of zincsulfate and NSF,take ethyl xanthate as copper-lead mixed floation collector,buthyl xanthate as zinc collector,Pine Camphor Oil as frother.By closed flowsheet,copper-lead mixed concentrate and zinc concentrate are obtained.In the copper-lead mixed concentrate the copper grade is 2.74%,the copper recovery is 90.68%, the lead grade is 69.47%,the lead recovery is 89.06%.The zinc concentrate has a zinc grade of 48.28%and a recovery of 91.90%.In the process of separating lead and copper from copper-lead mixed concentrate,we adopt the actived carbon as the removal reagent,use sulfuric acid to adjust the pH,take combined reagent CNS to inhibition lead when float copper.Under the best conditions, copper concentrate can be obtained with the open flowsheet,which has a copper grade of 27.20%and a lead grade of 12.05%.At the same time,we study the trend of silver,it mainly exists in copper-lead mixed concentrate,and next in zinc concentrate,some silver mineral has close symbiotic relationship with pyrites and gangues,as a result,it easily loss in the railings.