The main beneficiation processes for phosphate ore include heavy-medium separation, magnetic-electrostatic separation, scrubbing and desliming, roasting-digestion, flotation, photoelectric separation, chemical leaching and combined beneficiation flowsheets. Flotation remains the most widely used and effective method for the separation of phosphate ore in industrial applications.
Phosphorite is a high-grade lithium ore.The complete process is primarily divided into four key stages: high-temperature roasting, lithium extraction by hydrometallurgy, leachate refinement, and leach residue recycling.
Flotation is a key method for removing impurities from phosphogypsum, improving its quality and facilitating its resource recovery. It is primarily divided into direct flotation and reverse flotation, whilst industrial production often employs a combination of multiple processes.
Copper polymetallic sulphide ores are an important source of non-ferrous metals, typically characterised by close mineral association, fine grain size, and partial oxidation and alteration.
The sulphidation flotation process is currently the primary method for treating oxidised copper ores and mixed copper ores, and mainly comprises direct sulphidation flotation and hydrothermal sulphidation–warm-water flotation.
Conventional-sized white tungsten ore can be processed through simple roughing, but due to the minute particle size of fine-grained white tungsten ore and its similar floatability to calcium-bearing gangue, effective separation using conventional processes is difficult. In production, specialised processes such as ambient-temperature flotation and heated flotation must be specifically employed.
With the iterative upgrades of green mining and efficient mineral processing technologies, intelligent photoelectric mineral processing technology, with its core advantages of energy saving, environmental protection, high efficiency, and low cost, is gradually replacing traditional gravity separation and flotation processes, becoming a key technology for improving phosphate ore grade, eliminating waste ore, and recycling low-grade resources.
Tungsten ore beneficiation primarily relies on physical separation, commonly employing processes such as pre-concentration, gravity separation, flotation and magnetic separation; for difficult-to-process intermediate products and low-grade concentrates, chemical beneficiation is employed as a supplementary measure to achieve efficient recovery.
Industrially, the purification of spodumene primarily employs four mainstream processes: flotation, heavy-medium separation, magnetic separation, and combined beneficiation.
Lithium mica is one of the key sources of lithium. The lithium extraction process typically involves first using flotation to concentrate the ore into a lithium mica concentrate, followed by the use of acid, alkali, salt or pressure leaching processes to convert the lithium into soluble lithium salts, ultimately yielding products such as lithium carbonate.