Experimental study on the laws of natural concentration of fine tailings

The fine tailing used for filling aggregates in mines had a slow settling rate and a low concentration of underflow, which seriously affected the tailings preparation process.In the paper, the low, medium and high concentration of fine tailings with different initial concentrations were designed and 12 sets of natural settlement tests were carried out.By analyzing the test results of the underflow concentration of the fine tailings, the linear relationship was found between the initial concentration in the range of 8%~55% and the underflow concentration.The correlation coefficient was 0.16 and the initial concentration was 66.4%.In the process of natural sedimentation of middle and low concentration tailings slurry, the “clear water area” had higher turbidity, the settlement surface not obvious, and “three-layers phenomenon” appeared, which indicated that there was a clear coarse subdivision phenomenon and the rate of fine tailings was extremely low.According to the law of settlement curve of high concentration tailings, it could be seen that the sedimentation rate decreased with the increase of tailings concentration.