Project Name:3,000,000t/y Aggregate Project of Limonite in Yunnan Province

Location: Yunnan,China
Mineral:Limonite
Capacity:3,000,000t/y
Main equipment:SLon WHIMS+SLon Wet Drum Magnetic Separator

Processing technology:Magnetic seperation

    There is a large gold concentrator in Yunnan, whose raw materials are gold ores combined with iron ores. It mainly adapted leaching process for the extraction of gold. However, this methods causes the waste of fine grained tailings containing 48% TFe elements.

    In order to make full use of iron resources, SLon has performed plenty of experiments on the recovery of tailings. With the joint efforts of the different departments, we finally put up with a plan. In 2006, the plant built an iron separation production line with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons. The tailings are made up of magnetite and limonite. Due to the high magnetism of magnetite, SLon Wet Drum Magnetic Separator removes magnetite from the metal mix. And then the remaining materials will pass through two SLon-2000 Wet High Intensity Magnetic Separators(WHIMS) to recover limonite by a coarse-to fine technique. In this way will realize the effective separation of magnetite and limonite. The benefits generated by iron concentrates are used to maintain the operation of the gold mine, while the gold product becomes the net source of profit. With the output increasing, the plant scaled up the tailing recovery process.

    From 2010 to 2012, they replaced SLon-2000 WHIMS with SLon-2500 WHIMS, and built another processing line for 1.5 million tons per year. The detailed technical process is shown in the figure below. At present, the plant can recover more than 1 million tons of iron concentrates every year. The magnetite and limonite concentrates are sold separately or combined according to the market price, which creates a huge financial gain. At this time, the output has expanded to 4-5 times of the original.

    The technical process has been successfully applied in this plant, which provides good experience and reference for similar gold and iron ore symbiosis ores. Simultaneously, it makes outstanding contribution to the recovery and utilization of fine ores.