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This study is focused on the froth flotation reprocessing of a copper mineral from flotation tailings. The effects of flotation parameters including pulp density, collector dosage, frother dosage, and dispersant dosage were statistically examined to obtain an effective approach for concentrating copper minerals. The sample ore used in this study wa...
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... particle size distribution of has been executed on the tailing sample (as picked) is shown on Fig. 1. It can be observed that D90 ¼ 75 μm for the homogenized ...
Context 2
... [29,30]. This is mainly due to the pulp rheological characteristics. At higher pulp densities, the yield stress and apparent viscosity reach maximum values and under these conditions, particles are surrounded by each other to form a colloidal agglomeration that are harder to float. Moreover, the effect of the collector dosage as illustrated on Fig. 2b was 1,66 for a variation of 45 g/t. It resulted from this observation that the control of collector dosage during flotation is essential to make a good operation of flotation, therefore copper grade could be enhanced by increasing the collector dosage. Besides foam and bubble stability and other benefits, the effect of frother dosage is 0,0038 ...
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In the paper, the middlings (tailings of I cleaner flotation) were characterized, and new possibilities of their processing were presented. The advantages of introducing a separate circuit for middlings processing were emphasized. This circuit should be adapted to the properties of the processed middlings and characterized by relative simplicity. A...
Citations
... organic entrainment) with the decrease of input variables [12,14]. The highest absolute value means it has the largest effect on the response. ...
Physico-chemical treatment is the best technology for the purification of pregnant leach solutions (PLS) from copper–cobalt slurry because of its ability to separate the desired metallic ion from other ions contained in the PLS. This work investigated the batch solvent extraction (SX) of solutions from copper-cobalt slurry using MEXTRAL 984N. The continuity of two phases including the organic and aqueous phases was studied separately to optimize the SX key parameters such as the organic phase/aqueous phase (O/A) ratio (from 1 to 2) and the contact time of the organic and aqueous phases (from 2 to 5 min). The results of the experiments carried out in the laboratory showed the organic continuity was favorable for the extraction at a ratio of 1 and at contact time of 4 min and for the stripping at ratio of 1 and the contact time ranging from 4 to 5 min with an efficiency of 95.57 and 76.46% for the extraction and stripping respectively and organic entrainment of 0.53 and 0.3% for the extraction and stripping respectively, while for the same operational conditions in aqueous continuity, the efficiency was 92 and 72% for the extraction and stripping respectively and the organic entrainment of 0.57 and 1.5% for the extraction and stripping, respectively.
Graphical Abstract
A simplified principle of liquid-liquid separation
... By exploiting the differences in surface properties of minerals, flotation allows the selective separation of hydrophobic materials from hydrophilic materials. This process has become indispensable in the beneficiation of sulfide ores such as copper, lead, and zinc, and is also employed in the recovery of non-metallic minerals like phosphate and coal [7,8]. In addition to its widespread application in mineral beneficiation, flotation technology has gained prominence in environmental engineering, particularly for the removal of heavy metals from wastewater. ...
... Cobalt is recovered from primary resources (minerals) [3][4][5] and secondary resources such as tailings, spent batteries, and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). [4][5][6][7][8] The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds nearly 60% of the world's reserves of cobalt as a primary resource. [3,47,48] Cobalt is recovered from Cu-Co-bearing ores through a processing scheme that includes particle size reduction, acid-reducing leaching, purification of copper by solvent extraction (SX), and finally electrolysis for copper extraction. ...
The removal of Fe 2+ and Mn 2+ from cobalt sulfate-saturated solutions is frequently problematic for Cu-Co hydrometallurgical process performance. Among the applied and developed methods for the removal of these metals, adsorption has drawn less attention. This study investigates on the removal of Fe 2+ and Mn 2+ in industrial cobalt solutions known as raffinates by adsorption on activated carbon prepared from post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The adsorption operating conditions were studied in synthetic solutions and industrial solutions. The Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin isotherms were then used to fit the adsorption data, while the pseudo-first-order (PFO), pseudo-second-order (PSO), and Elovich models were used to describe the kinetics. Linear and nonlinear kinetic and isotherm models were studied and compared. Furthermore, intraparticle diffusion (IPD) models were used to study the transfer mass mechanism. The results show that Fe 2 + and Mn 2+ are removed from Co solutions with the efficiencies of 62.14 and 68.43, respectively. The Langmuir model fits the Fe 2+ and Mn 2+ adsorption data better, indicating that chemisorption is preferred over physisorption, whereas the Freundlich model fits the Co 2+ adsorption data better, indicating that physisorption is preferred over chemisorption. The PFO model describes well the kinetic behavior of Fe 2+ and Mn 2+ , whereas the Elovich model describes better the kinetic behavior of Co 2+. According to the IPD model, the step that limits the adsorption of Fe 2+ , Mn 2+ , and Co 2+ is essentially diffusion through the activated carbon pores. The reported experimental results will highlight the use of activated carbon in the removal of Fe 2+ and Mn 2+ in Cu and Co hydrometallurgy.
... These include preventing tailings erosion and dust generation, controlling the entry of oxygen and water into tailings (to prevent acid drainage production), preventing the spread of contaminants to the environment by controlling seepage, and providing conditions for establishing a sustainable vegetation system. Regulating water penetration into hazardous industrial, urban, mineral, and radioactive waste disposal areas is one of the most significant reasons for implementing cover systems [6][7][8][9]. In the course of mining and afterward, sulfuric acid and metal ions are produced as a result of the oxidation of pyritic materials. ...
... Froth flotation has been a highly useful method of processing sulphide minerals because it has been ascertained over the years that the method is effective [10]. The complexity in the mineralogical composition of most sulphide minerals has necessitated the selectivity in their processing. ...
... On the other hand, the absorption of activation energy of SBX was high on the pyrite surface, which hindered high pyrite recovery. Potassium ethyl xanthate has been reported to have enhanced hydrophobicity and promotion of bubbles in the flotation of low-grade copper ore [10,22]. It has been reported that the total loss of copper-bearing minerals in 0.020e0.071 ...
... Froth flotation is largely preferred in the mineral processing industry to separate fine hydrophobic and hydrophilic particles that cannot be easily concentrated by physical methods. An effective flotation application requires understanding and optimization of four key flotation process components, including the mineralogical properties of the ore, surface chemistry, process engineering, and reagent chemistry that determines the selectivity of the flotation parameters [34]. Plastics with low free surface energy easily report to the floating product due to their hydrophobic properties, while metal particles with higher free surface energy get wet and sink [35]. ...
... As it is well known, one of the most important parameters affecting the yield, selectivity, and recovery in flotation is the amount of solids in the pulp. At high pulp densities, the yield stress and apparent viscosity reach their maximum values, and under these conditions, the particles form a colloidal agglomerate that is more difficult to float [34]. In the preliminary flotation studies, the experiments were carried out with different feed amounts. ...
The recycling of valuable metals from spent lithium-ion batteries (S-LIBs) has become more significant in our society, so the focus of most academic studies has been on the recovery of active battery materials. On the contrary, research on the separation of anode-cathode foils and casing metals, which are essential parts of LIBs, remained limited. To reduce costs and maximize the recovery valuable metals need to be pre-treated before chemical treatment. Therefore, the main objective of this study is the recycling of plastics and the selective production of valuable metals using a combination of physical and physicochemical methods. The results showed that most of the plastics with natural hydrophobicity could be removed with the help of a frother. After plastic flotation, the particle size, the dosages of collectors, frother, and activator were investigated and a copper concentrate assaying 53.5% Cu was obtained at the end of the copper flotation circuit. Dry magnetic separation was subjected to copper flotation tailings to separate ferromagnetic metals (Fe and Ni) from diamagnetic Al particles and the process achieved a recovery of around 99%. The proposed flowchart for the LIBs recycling industry is simple and highly efficient for the recycling of metals and plastics.
... The exploitation and utilization of other copper resources is the key to solving the crisis. For example, Kasongo et al used a 2 4 -factor design experiment to explore the influencing factors of flotation in order to recover copper metal as much as possible [3]. The utilization of copper oxide also attracts more and more attention. ...
Sulfidization xanthate flotation remains the most promising method for the beneficiation of malachite. In this study, L-arginine (LA) was first used to modify the malachite surface and improve the efficiency of sulfidization flotation. The performance of LA was evaluated by the flotation experiments. The mechanism of interaction between LA and the malachite surface was investigated by adsorption experiments, zeta potential measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. Flotation experiments showed that LA had a significantly promoting effect on malachite sulfidization flotation. Adsorption experiments and SEM-EDS results indicated that LA improved the adsorption of S (II) species into the malachite surface and promoted the formation of sulfides. This finding was further confirmed by the XPS analysis. The XPS measurements results determined that S (II) species reacted with Cu (II) on the malachite surface and form polysulfides, adding LA promoted the reaction. The zeta potential measurements showed that LA increased the positive electrical properties of the mineral surface, which was conducive to S (II) species adsorption and the sulfidization reaction. This work sheds new light on the development of sulfidization activation.
... Recent studies show that tailings reprocessing can reduce the footprint of the mining industry and be profitable at the same time (Yin et al., 2018). For instance, research has been developed to study froth flotation methods for reprocessing (Manca et al., 2021;Brest et al., 2021). Also, from an economic point of view, reprocessing has been used as a way to increase resource efficiency (Drobe et al., 2021) or to move towards a zero-waste process (Kumar et al., 2021). ...
Global mining generates a large amount of mine tailings, which can produce negative effects on the environment. To counteract this, government guidelines and scientific interest have emerged to reuse tailings deposits in innovative ways, converting them from an environmental liability to an economic asset. Thus, the characterization of a tailings deposit is of great importance to analyze the content of critical raw materials, as well as for a possible revaluation of the deposit, facilitating the mining process to be carried out in a more sustainable way. To characterize their chemical composition, information from drilling campaigns can be used. However, the evaluation of resources in tailings deposits has several complexities such as the poor grade spatial continuity and its narrow geometry, reasons for which traditional geostatistics is not adapted to model this type of deposit. In contrast, transitive geostatistics can be an opportunity to tackle this taking advantage of the fully delimited domain in a tailings dam and a different structural analysis. By achieving a better characterization of tailings composition, it is possible to make better decisions for their reprocessing, thus supporting cleaner mining production.
This study aims to provide a framework for the geostatistical modeling and prediction of remaining metal resources of the Haveri tailings in southwestern Finland. The modeled variables are the gold, cobalt, copper and iron grades, with cobalt being of special interest as a critical material. The grades have been measured at 165 drill hole, totaling 1201 samples composited at 1 meter.
An exploratory data analysis is performed first to clean the database and to identify the statistical and spatial distributions of the data. Then a structural analysis is applied to model the grade spatial continuity. Leave-one-out cross-validation is subsequently used to validate the fitted model and to quantify the prediction errors. Finally, 3D block models of the gold, cobalt, copper and iron grade are constructed with ordinary kriging and transitive kriging and are compared.
Cross-validation shows that both kriging methods yield a good precision of the predictions and perform equally well for copper and iron, but transitive kriging significantly outperforms ordinary kriging for gold and cobalt and also provides less smoothed block models than ordinary kriging. Transitive kriging thus appears as an effective alternative for assessing resources in tailings and other narrow deposits. Recommendations on the sampling design to optimize the coverage of the target area and to ease the covariogram inference are also given.
... Studies are often conducted at the laboratory, pilot, or industrial scale. Therefore, statistical investigations and computational simulation are used as alternative means for the design and configuration of processes [3,6,7]. The advantage of computational simulation includes predicting process behavior without the need to conduct excessive experiments on the entire process [1]. ...
... In this case, five reactions (Eqs. [4][5][6][7][8] were defined to simulate copper and cobalt dissolution using empirical kinetic parameters reported in the literature as given in Table 5. Each of the five reactions below corresponds to the dissolution of a specific metal contained in one or more minerals. ...
In this study, an ASPEN Plus model in steady state, based on experimental studies, was developed to investigate the leaching behavior of copper and cobalt minerals in sulfuric acid-sodium metabisulfite media. The experimental results indicated that copper and cobalt dissolution efficiencies reach 91 and 72%, respectively. The integration of experimental parameters set-up in the ASPEN Plus simulator allowed the reliability of the developed model. The sensitivity analysis performed highlighted the relative effect of acid concentration, leaching time, temperature, and sodium metabisulfite on the leaching process. Moreover, it revealed that the dissolution of copper minerals was mainly enhanced by the increasing sulfuric acid mass flow rate. The dissolution of cobalt from asbolane was promoted by increasing sulfuric acid mass flow rate, while the extraction of cobalt contained in heterogenite highly depended on sodium metabisulfite (Na2S2O5) mass flow rate. However, a marginal decrease in copper recovery was observed by increasing the mass flow rate of sodium metabisulfite. ASPEN Plus simulated results showed that the leaching recovery could reach 99.77% and 97.92% for copper and cobalt under optimized operating conditions, respectively.
... The Congolese Copperbelt contains values sulfide ores that are abandoned or simply unexploited. Several attempts have been made to recover copper and cobalt from these ores via the hydrometallurgy route, including concentration by flotation [17]. Some have succeeded in satisfying the technical aspect while failing to meet the economic and environmental constraint or vice versa. ...
... Iron is a critical polluting element for leaching solutions due to the resistance for further purification stages [24]. Many researchers have claimed that enhanced copper recovery in chloride media is related to the production of copper and iron chloro-complexes that modify the ORP, according to Equations (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) and (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19) [77], and both cuprous and ferric ions can act as the oxidants [55] : ...
... Iron is a critical polluting element for leaching solutions due to the resistance for further purification stages [24]. Many researchers have claimed that enhanced copper recovery in chloride media is related to the production of copper and iron chloro-complexes that modify the ORP, according to Equations (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18) and (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19) [77], and both cuprous and ferric ions can act as the oxidants [55] : ...
This study investigated the effects of sulfuric acid concentration, sodium chloride concentration, temperature, particle size distribution, and leaching time on copper and cobalt recovery from a sulfide ore. A representative sample was first characterized using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron and Microscopy coupled with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) to determine the chemistry, the mineralogy, and the mineral distribution, respectively. The outcomes from the characterization revealed that the ores contain copper and cobalt as valuable minerals associated with iron and disseminated in the gangue minerals which occur principally in a silicate form. After characterization, the sample was subjected to leaching in the presence of a mixt solution containing H2SO4 and NaCl. The thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of understanding the dissolution of Cu and Co from sulfide sources were studied while investigating the effect of parameters such as H2SO4 concentration, the addition of NaCl, particles size and temperature. The atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) was used the determine the amount of dissolved copper, cobalt, and iron. The residues generated from the leaching were also characterized for the chemistry, mineralogy, and mineral distribution while the outcomes were compared to the as-received sample.
The results revealed that an increase of temperature from 65 to 85℃ had a positive effect on the recovery of copper and cobalt while under 55 ℃ no large influence was observed. Also, the acid concentration had a significant role in dissolving copper and cobalt from its matrix. The recovery of copper, cobalt and iron was essentially dependent of sulfuric acid concentration in the pH range from 0.8 to 2. Leaching experiments were ran with and without sodium chloride, a range of NaCl concentrations from 1 to 4 M was added in the leaching solution; it was observed that copper and cobalt recovery was enhanced while sodium chloride was added in the leaching solution but started decreasing at high temperature (85 ℃) when the sodium concentration was about 4 M. This recovery decline might be explained by the fact sodium chloride crystallize at temperatures above 80℃. Cobalt recovery was half that copper; the main reason of that observation is that, in the presence of H2S, cobalt can precipitate from an aqueous solution as cobalt sulfide with different stoichiometric ratios and iron precipitated in form of natro-jarosite. Copper and cobalt minerals were exposure at all particle size distribution by this fact a slight increase of copper and cobalt leaching rates was observed by varying the particle size distribution. Chemical control, and diffusion control models gave the best fitting to the copper, cobalt, and iron data. The activation energies were calculated in the temperature range
IV
from 45 to 85℃. The use of the Arrhenius equation gives the values of the activation energy of 10.92, 18.83 and 25.25 kJ/mol respectively for copper, cobalt, and iron dissolution, for the chemical reaction control and 31.023, 37.28 and 50.32 kJ/mol respectively for copper, cobalt, and iron dissolution for the diffusion reaction control. The measured maximum recovery of copper, cobalt and iron within 120 minutes were nearly 24.71%, 15.65% and 15.64% respectively.
Moreover, to compare experimental output data from leaching experiments and the predicted value, an artificial neural network (ANN) was developed. The copper, cobalt, and iron recoveries as desired responses; sulfuric acid concentration (M), sodium chloride concentration (M), temperature (℃) and particle size distribution (μm) and leaching time (minutes) were the inputs variables and the stirring speed as the bias. Feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network algorithm was used to develop, train, and predict the model. A total of 204 sets of data were used in the development and training of the model. To reach the network with a good agreement and highest generalizability and to reduce the error between the measured and predicted, the neural networks with different number hidden layers (one up to ten number of hidden layers) was searched. As a result, three architectures (arrangements) were developed; {5-1-3}, {5-5-3} and {5-10-3} architectures could give the most accurate prediction for copper, cobalt, and iron leaching rate. The regression analysis of the {5-1-3-3} arrangement gave the correlation coefficient of 0.98, 0.96, and 0.98 and the mean square error of 0.87, 1.37, 0.69 for the training, validation, and testing set, respectively for copper, cobalt, and iron recoveries. In the {5-5-3-3} architecture, it found a good correlation coefficient of 0.995, 0.99, and 0.99 and the mean square error of 0.224, 0,35, and 0.26 for the training, validation, and testing set, respectively. The correlation coefficient was about 0.997, 0.997, and 0.997 and the mean square error values were 0.111, 0,148, and 0.106 for the training, validation, and testing set in {5-10-3-3} architecture. The results demonstrated that ANN has a good potential to predict copper, cobalt, and iron recoveries. The increase in the number of hidden layers was found to increase the performance of the ANN model. The predicted copper, cobalt, and iron recoveries of {5-10-3-3} architecture was used for the comparison with the experimental values. The predicted maximum recovery of copper, cobalt and iron within 120 minutes were nearly 24.794%, 15.576% and 16.204% respectively.
