Mineralogical characterisation of iron ore tailings by integrated mineral analyser.

Abstract

Ore technological characterisation consists of a sequence of operations used in obtaining essential information used for route scaling and improvements on overall yield in a process, comprising, within the mineralogical characterisation stage, the fundamental and textural basis for technical and economic feasibility of a mineral project. Among the various mineralogical characterisation techniques that currently exist, there is a special interest in integrated mineral analysers, which are instruments used to perform quick and precise automatic qualitative and quantitative mineralogical analysis. The produced results were validated through the characterisation of tailing samples from the flotation and magnetic separation of iron ore. Qualitatively, the tailing samples revealed a mineralogy composed essentially by quartz, hematite, goethite and magnetite. Quantitatively, higher volumetric fractions in quartz and lower volumetric fractions in iron oxides/hydroxides and accessory minerals were verified on the flotation and coarse magnetic separation tailing samples, while fine magnetic separation tailings samples presented higher proportions in iron oxides/hydroxides and lower proportions of quartz. The results were all validated by previous studies undertaken through complementary techniques.