Experimental study on improving quality and benefits of rough copper concentrates

The lead and zinc contents of the raw ore from a copper concentrator are both less than 0.20%, but due to the adhesion of the used copper collectors, the lead and zinc minerals could be easily mixed into copper concentrates, which exceeds the lead and zinc standard and affected the quality of the copper concentrates seriously.According to the ore property analysis results, the lead and zinc minerals mainly existed in the form of sulfides, and both have higher liberation degree, which indicats a certain comprehensive utilization value.To solve the above problems, based on the results of abundant lab tests, the used collector Z200 of copper flotation is replaced by ethyl xanthate, which reduces the adhesion affect and creates favorable conditions for the subsequent lead and zinc comprehensive utilization of rough copper concentrates.For copper rough concentrates, sodium sulfide has been adopted for reagent removal process, polysulfide TY has been selected as copper depressant, and ethyl thio carbamate has been used as lead collector.Not only a lead concentrate which contains more than 50% Pb is obtained from the the rough copper concentrates, but also the lead and zinc contents are reduced to less than 8%.Finally, the copper grade increases to about 17% with a maintained recovery of about 82%, which improves the quality and increases the benefits of copper concentrates, all these could be reference for similar copper concentrators.