The Ankang Refractory Rutile Ore Beneficiation Pilot Study

Rutile is important raw material of producing titanium metal and titanium dioxide. At present, the overseas natural rutile resources are facing exhaustion, In recent years, such large-scale rutile deposits have been discovered in FangCheng in HeNan province, ShangNan in ShanXi province, XinHai in Jiangsu, Dai Town in ShanXi in China. The development and utilization of domestic natural rutile resources are of great practical significance for the development of titanium industry, such as rutile titanium dioxide and titanium sponge titanium in China.But most of the natural rutile ores in China are primary ores, the grade of raw ores is low and disseminated grain size is fine. The character of ores is very complex. They are fine-grained or microfine-grained refractory rutile ores. Therefore the single dressing technical process cannot be used. The present illogical dressing technology has caused that the domestic natural rutile resources can't obtain development and can't be used effectively, so that the demand of our country on rutile mainly depends on import.The geologic reserve of rutile in Ankang is quite great. The grade of rutile is high. Its disseminated size is fine and it is also enwrapped by gangue minerals such as chlorite. Therefore the separation is very difficult.Experiments were conducted on Ankang rutile ores in this study to seek the reasonable dressing craft on fine-grained or microfine-grained refractory rutile ores and to establish the basis for separating rutile primary ores as well as fine-grained or microfine-grained refractory ores.In the test process, process mineralogy study of run-of-mine has been conducted. A series of dressing experimental researches have also been carried on, such as the flotation process, the gravity separation, the magnetic separation, the acid cleaning and so on. The study focuses on throwing tailing by flotation process. Finally, the flotation, the gravity separation, acid cleaning and flotation combined flow was used. Because of the high demand on rutile concentrate grade, single separation method could hardly attain ideal index on fine-grained or microfine-grainedrefractory ores.Throwing tailings effectively by roughing is the overall outlook to achieve the goal.It is shown by the result of study:the tailing was thrown away 72.27% disposably by flotation, then through gravity separation, regrinding and pickling the rough concentrate and the flotation process, rutile concentrates were obtained in which the grade of TiO₂. S, P, Fe₂O₃ is 90.24%,0.022%, 0.0084% and 0.8% respectively. The concentrate index has achieved the secondary quality standard.According to the flotation process can concentrate the purpose mineral initially, In the flotation rough concentrate, mineral composition is relatively simple. The specific gravity difference between the purpose mineral and other gangue mineral is more obvious. Thus cleaning was carried on by using the gravity separation, namely "flotation process-gravity separation combined technology".This technology can enhance the rutile's grade and play the vital role for further grinding , acid cleaning and the flotation process. It not only simplified the work flow, but also the dressing cost was lowered. This technics has the innovation.