The New Process Of Enriching Cobalt From Magnetite Tailings

Cobalt is an important strategic mineral resources and one of serious shortagenine kinds of mineral resources,so must intensify exploitation and utilization of cobaltresources. The general situations of cobalt resources and production in the world wereanalyzed,according to the characteristics of low content of cobalt with complexcomponents and the findings of cobalt in the mineral processing, The segregation andmagnetic separation technology enriching cobalt from magnetite tailings were putforward to improve the Co grade of Yunan low grade magnetite, and every steps werediscussed.Thermodynamic analysis on metals such as cobalt, iron metal chlorinatedsegregation and the basic principles of chloridizing segregation have shown thatchloride segregation of cobalt needs higher temperature,and hydrogen chloride gasescan repeatedly participate in segregation reaction,and we can recognize the possibleproduct of formation based on chlorinated segregation temperature and theconcentration of carbon monoxide in the reaction process.The result of cross experiment shows that the dosage of reducing agentcontribut the strongest influence to cobalt concentrate grade,and followed bysegregation temperature and segregation time,the last is dosage of chlorinatingagent,and the influence of dosage of reducing agent is much more stable than that ofdosage of chlorinating agent.Raising dosage of reducing agent and segregationtemperature can improve cobalt concentrate grade. The best process factors based onthe orthogonal experiment are that16wt.%dosage of reducing agent,4wt.%dosage ofchlorinating agent,1200℃of segregation temperature and2h of segregationtime.Furthering optimization experiment on the orthogonal experiment basis can getthe suitable technical conditions is that the concentrate grade can reach0.0216wt.%on the condition of0.045～0.074mm of feeding size,16wt.%dosage of reducingagent,6wt.%dosage of chlorinating agent,1200℃of segregation temperature and2.5hof segregation time. Using this calcine for magnetic separation test shows that the grade can reach0.0445percent, and the recovery rate can also reach63.04wt.%underthe condition of0.038～0.045mm calcine size and2000Gs magnetic intensity,at thesame time,cobalt of the concentrate is enriched about4.5times than that oftailings.Copper is is enriched about3.7times than before and nickel is enriched about3.8times than before.This result of the lesson shows that the segregation and magnetic separationtechnology can recover the valuable metallic cobalt,copper and nickel.Thedevelopment of this process provides a pathway for synthetical recovering the valuablemetal from low grade magnetite ore in south of Yu Province,which has the certainsignificance for synthesis utilizing of the low grade cobalt resources.