Copper Beneficiation Technical Process

Conspectus of Mineral Processing

Copper is a common mineral which mainly divide into: sulfide copper ore and oxidized copper ore. The chalcopyrite, chalcocite, covellite and bornite all belongs to sulfide copper ore. They all have good floatability, which can be collected through the flotation process in the function of xanthate, dithiophosphate(chemical agent, which has better effect if used both ) and the foaming agent pine oil. If there is pyrite in the gangue minerals, it should be separated out. Generally, it has two flotation ways: differential flotation and bulk flotation. Differential flotation is a process which first float copper and then sulfur in the action of xanthate, dithiophosphate or both. In case of restraining pyrite when floating copper, the lime should be add to keep the whole work goes successfully under the environment of strong alkaline. The bulk flotation often works in a neutral environment to separate out mixed concentrate of copper and sulfur, and then further to separate out copper and sulfur.

Application

Copper beneficiation process can be applied to mass production of sulfide copper ore.

Technology Advantage

Generally it adopts one closed-circuit two process crushing, one closed-circuit grinding, and one rough crushing three fine grinding one scavenging flotation process，that is to say, rough crushing, fine crushing, screening, fine grinding, classifying and flotation.
The detailed process is as follows: the raw material is send to the rough crusher by the vibrating feeder, then to the fine crusher. After that, the raw material comes to screen, at this process, the material on the screen(big granules) will go back to the fine crusher for a second crushing. And the material below the screen is acceptable product which can be transferred to the fine ore bin. Under the bin there should be a feeder, the fine ore is send to the ball mill by the belt conveyor. And further, the material goes to the spiral classifier, also the big granules are send back to the mill for a second grinding. The material in the spiral classifier overflows and goes to the next flotation process. Concentrate ore after flotation is sent to the settling pond. The tailing is sent to the tailing pond.

Production Instance

A 300TPD copper sulfide production line in the South America. This project has high efficiency by adopting the above technical process. The grade of copper is 23%, the metal recovery rate is 92% or more, which has huge economic benefits.

Note: The above program is for reference only. The actual process should provide the type and content of the ore-related elements of the user how to develop programs