Manganese is an important raw material in the steel industry, accounting for about 90% manganese consumption. The rest is used in light industry, chemical industry, medical industry and so on. However, there are abundant low-grade manganese ore resources, and the quality of manganese concentrates is far from meeting the market demand. Therefore, it’s imperative how to develop and utilize low-grade manganese ore resources.

In the past, many dressing plants adapted washing method to recycle coarse manganese ores, and fine particles with a large amount of slime were directly discharged into tailings pond, which caused a great wast of  useful metals. In order to make full use of low-grade manganese resources, our technicians have made a lot of experiments and done some adjustments to the HGMS. In recent years, through our extensive research tests and practical applications, it proves that updated Manganese Ore HGMS has a good effect on the separation of low-grade manganese ores, which shows a good application prospect. Here’s exploratory test indexes in China.

The Industrial Application of Manganese Ore HGMS

1. 37,500 tons/year Lead-zinc Ore Tailings Recycle Project in QiXiashan, Nanjing

There’s a old mining plant in QiXiashan, which is mainly engaged in lead-zinc ore benefication. Its annual tailings are 150,000 tons, which contain about 12% Mn and 18,000 tons of manganese metals. If the Mn grade of tailings can be upgraded to more than 22%, it can be used as the raw material for manganese sulfate. In 2005, MaAnshan Institute of Mining Research has introduced two SLon-1500 Wet High Intensity Magnetic Separator(WHIMS) to recycle manganese concentrates from the tailings. Finally, the grade of Mn is increased from 12% to 24% by the coarse-to-fine method, and the recovery rate can be reached to 50%. The whole process produces 37,500 tons/year manganese concentrates, which creates a huge economic benefit for the factory.

2. ManganeseOre Tailings Recycle Project of Jinshui Mining Company

Jinshui Mining Company is located in Inner Mongolia, China. It used to select coarse manganese ores by washing method. Later, they purchased SLon-1000, SLon-1250 and SLon-1500 WHIMS to collect fine-grained manganese ores. After only one separation, the Mn grade can be increased from 8.85% to 30.39%, and the recovery rate is 75.30%.  

3. Low-grade Manganese Benefication Project of Yongdeng Mining Company

In 2005, Yongdeng Mining Company in Gansu province built a manganese ore concentrator and adapted SLON-1250 and SLON-1500 WHIMS to deal with low-grade manganese ores. The raw materials contain 16.94% Mn, which need to be ground to -200 mesh accounted for 83%. Through one SLon strong magnetism, the Mn grade of manganese concentrates can reach to 31.88%, and the recovery rate is 61.20%.

4. Conclusion

Through plenty of practical applications in a large number of manganese mining enterprises, it turns out that SLon WHIMS has a good separation effect on low-grade manganese ores with fine particle size. The manganese enrichment ratio can reach 1.44 ~3.43, and the manganese recovery rate can reach 53% ~ 83%, which makes the price and quality of manganese concentrate rise perpendicularly, and brings considerable economic benefits for mining enterprises.