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Improvements at the Sarcheshmeh copper mine flotation circuit
By
S. Banisi, A. Kargar and M. Pourkani
Published in
Flotation 2000, Conference Abstracts, Adelaide, Australia, march 29-31
at
2000
Direct link:
http://kmpchemmat.ir/pii/32069
Abstract
Flotation circuit of the Sarcheshmeh copper mine, which processes 40,000 t/d of ore at 0.9% Cu, consists of rougher, cleaning and recleaning stages. To study the stage recovery of copper, one of the eight identical flotation banks was selected for sampling. It was observed that 14% of copper goes to the tailings and the lowest copper recovery was for particles coarser than 105 microns. The third unit (last five cells) of this bank not only did not recover appreciable amount of copper but also decreased the concentrate grade. The grade of the last five cells was lower than the feed grade suggesting that mixing of the concentrates of the three units was not beneficial. To alleviate the problem, rather than current practice of adding the reagents only at the feed tank (i.e., 100..0-0 %), various combinations of stage addition were examined. It was found that 75-0-25 % addition regime could increase the total copper recovery by 1- 2%. At the recleaning stage in order to increase the final copper concentrate grade, a froth washing system was used. To ease the maintenance of the system, perforated trays were installed behind the paddles and 25 cm above the froth. The optimum wash water superficial flowrate was found to be 0.2 emfs. Continuos sampling of the recleaning cells with and without wash water over a period of two months showed an increase of 2% in final copper concentrate grade while the overall recovery of the circuit remained constant.
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