Evaluation of Additional Iron Recovery from Iron Ore Tailings

Abstract

The article demonstrates feasibility of additional iron recovery from the secondary kind of mineral raw materials—dry magnetic separation tailings obtained at crushing and processing factories of Abaza and Irba and wet magnetic separation tailing produced at Abagur processing plant of Evrazruda. Dry centrifugal separation treatment of Abaza tailings–3 mm in size allowed 6.3% of middlings with Fe_total and Fe_mag contents of 40.4 and 32%, respectively; the result of dry magnetic separation of Irba tailings -5 mm in size is 7.7% middlings with the content of Fe_total and Fe_mag 39.9 and 30.8%. Wet magnetic separation of Abagur tailings -0.007 mm in size allowed recovery of 0.6 to 1.45% of magnetic fraction with Fe_total content of 53.3 and 51.6%, respectively, and Fe_mag content of 49.8 and 48.5%. Fitting of modern separators with the magnetic systems based on neodymium–ferrum–boron considerably improves output of the machines (in dry centrifugal separation circuit) and enhances the yield of magnetic product in wet separation of tailings.