Tungsten Processing | 4 Successful Processing Plants
Wolframite and scheelite are the only commercially mined tungsten ores, often accompanied by minerals such as molybdenum, cassiterite, and sulfide ore.
This blog will show 4 successful tungsten processing plants, hoping to give you help.
1. Wolframite processing plant in Canada
A tungsten processing plant in northwestern Canada has the largest tungsten mine in the Western world. Open-pit method is used for wolframite-based tungsten mining. It is the Quartz-Wolframite-Sulfide-type composite mine.
The mineral characteristics are deep color (black), coarse particle size (0-150mm), easy to form mud, and raw ore containing 0.47% WO3.
Customers requirements£º
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Capacity : 100 t/h
- Target minerals : wolframite, scheelite, bismuth and sliver.
- Wolframite concentrate grade: Up to 65%.
Ftmmachinery solution£º
Crushing - grinding ¨C separation - slime recovery - drying
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Step #1 Crushing: The feeding size is less than 150 mm. The tungsten rock is crushed by aCrusherand Crusher. A Crusher can screen the materials and remove the fine powder. The discharging size is between 3-5 mm.
- Step #2 Grinding: As it is easy to form slime, a Crusher is used to grind the ore, avoiding over-grinding. The grinding fineness is -40 mesh.
- Step #3 Gravity separation: The gravity equipment uses a jig and Crusher. The jig is used for roughing and recovering coarse particle wolframite, while the shaking table is for selecting fine-grained concentrate.
- Step #4 Flotation separation: Use aCrusher to remove sulfides in order to liberate the tungsten. The process flow is mixed flotation of sulfide ore - separation of wolframite by strong magnetic separation - scheelite flotation - wolframite flotation.
- Step #5 Magnetic separation: Use a Crusher to remove magnetic minerals, such as pyrite, pyrrhotite, etc.
- Step #6 Recovery of fine tungsten slime: Fine wolframite slime accounts for 10% of the raw ore and the tungsten grade (14%-15%) is higher than the raw ore, so the slime recovery is very important. Ftmmachinery uses gravity and magnetic separation to recover tungsten from slime. The final fine mud recovery rate is increased to 60%-70%.
- Step #7 Drying: After drying with aCrusher, the water content is 0.3%.
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Use modified water glass to selectively inhibit gangue minerals.
- Use lead salts to activate tungsten minerals.
- Use the new-type chelating collector to do mixed flotation separation of wolframite and scheelite, and the mixed coarse concentrate is heated and selected to obtain scheelite.
- For the selected tailings, use the GY collector to obtain wolframite concentrate.
Processing result£º
The WO3 in the concentrate reaches 70.07% and the recovery rate reaches 81.62%.
2. Tungsten-tin ore processing plant in Russia
A tungsten-tin ore processing plant in Russia is an open-pit mine located in the northern Caucasus. The ore is a quartz-cassiterite, wolframite, and clinopyroxene type mine.
The main metal minerals are wolframite and cassiterite, followed by galena, sphalerite, Chalcopyrite arsenopyrite, and Bismuthite. The Gangue are quartz and feldspar. The grade of tungsten oxide (WO3) is 0.26%.
