How Copper Ore Is Processed From Raw Ore To Copper Concentrate

Copper is a common non-ferrous metal and has a very close relationship with human beings. It has been widely used in electrical, light industry, construction industry, machinery manufacturing and national defense industry. Copper in nature can be divided into copper sulfide and copper oxide according to the degree of oxidation. Next, this article will introduce the mineral processing technology of these two copper mines.

Copper sulfide mineral processing technology

The commonly used beneficiation method for copper sulfide is flotation, and there are different processes for treating copper ore with different dissemination types.

(1) One-stage grinding + flotation process: copper ore directly enters the flotation process after one-time grinding. This method is suitable for the ore that embedded grain size of copper minerals are coarse and uniform, and loosely combined with gangue minerals.This process is simple, the beneficiation cost is low, and it is widely used in small and medium-sized copper beneficiation plants.

(2)One-stage grinding + regrinding flotation rough concentrate process: the rough concentrate obtained by the first grinding + flotation will be ground again to a finer particle size, and then be selected for two to three times to obtain The final copper concentrate. In this process, due to the regrinding of the coarse concentrate, the dissociation degree of copper minerals and gangue minerals is good, so a higher quality flotation concentrate can be obtained.

(3)Two-stage grinding + two-stage (one-stage) flotation process: copper ore is ground twice to obtain finer-grained copper minerals, and then enters the flotation process. This method is suitable for copper ore embedded in uneven thickness. In order to dissociate the copper ore better, it is necessary to grind the ore finer. This process can achieve better results in terms of grinding efficiency and preventing over-pulverization of copper minerals.

Copper oxide mineral processing technology

In addition to the common flotation method, the beneficiation methods of copper oxide include acid leaching, ammonia leaching, etc. Next, the flotation method and acid leaching method are mainly introduced.

(1) Flotation method: Sulfidation flotation method is commonly used in the flotation of copper oxide ore, which is to pre-sulfide copper minerals with the help of soluble sulfides such as sodium sulfide, and then use copper sulfide collectors to recover them.

2) Acid leaching method: This method mostly uses dilute sulfuric acid as the leaching agent, and leaches copper minerals into the leaching solution through heap leaching, pool leaching, in-situ leaching, stirring leaching, etc., and then uses displacement, precipitation, extraction-electrodeposition and other methods to extract copper from the leaching solution.

The above are several common beneficiation processes of copper mines, among which the main equipment are ball mills, flotation machines, high-efficiency stirring tanks, etc. For different types of copper minerals, the beneficiation method should be determined through processing tests.