Study on the recovery of zinc minerals from the tailing of a lead & zinc mineral processing plant

The sample used in the experiment came from a Lead &Zinc mineral processing plant of Guizhou province. The tailing of the plant had placed in the open area for more than a decade, and the properties of the mineral had greatly changed, which made it very difficult to separate. The exploratory experiments indicated that the “ZnS firstly collected, ZnO second” principle flowsheet was very necessary to the mineral. Then the reagents used in both collections were determined: in first flotation, CuSO₄ was used to activate sphalerite, then Aero Xantathate was used as collector; in second flotation, NaS was used as sulphurateor, CuSO₄ as activator, Aero Xantathate and Hydroximic acid as collectors. The flowsheet—“one roughing, four scavenging, the rough concentrate and the concentrate of the third scavenging were both concentrated three times, the two concentrate mixed as the final concentrate” was attained through a great deal of experiments. The concentrate got from the closed circuit contained 39.68% Zn with a recovery of 73.74%.