Experiment research on mineral processing of iron ore associated copper and zinc

An iron ore contains iron 25.78%, copper 0.24% and zinc 0.33%. Due to its low location and fine dissemination particle size, it is difficult to obtain an iron concentrate with grade of more than 60% by using the beneficiation process of one-grinding magnetic separation, and the associated low-grade copper and zinc minerals have not been effectively recovered. In this paper, the process of regrinding-weak intensity magnetic separation-flotation is adopted to study the comprehensive recovery of iron, copper and zinc from the ore. The results show that iron concentrate with the grade of 66.02% and recovery of 80.22%, copper concentrate with the grade of 19.03% and recovery of 55.60%, zinc concentrate with the grade of 48.20% and recovery of 65.88% are obtained, by using regrinding-magnetic separation with grinding fineness of 75.25% -0.074 mm and regrinding fineness of 95.30% -0.043 mm in the process of recovering iron minerals, lime+Na₂SiO₃+Na₂S as regulators, DY1 and ethyl xanthate as combined collector in the copper flotation, and CuSO₄ as activator, butyl xanthate and 2^# oil as collectors in the zinc flotation. The iron, copper and zinc in the ore have been effectively recovered, which provides a technical reference for improving the comprehensive utilization rate of refractory low-grade iron resources.