How to purify sphalerite, what are the beneficiation processes?

Sphalerite (ZnS) is a representative zinc-containing sulfide mineral and an important resource for the production of zinc metal. In Pb-Zn deposits, sphalerite is often found together with other sulfide minerals such as galena, chalcopyrite and pyrite, which are separated from each other by froth flotation.

The beneficiation process of most sphalerite consists of crushing, screening, grinding and flotation. In order to improve the recovery rate of sphalerite, the ore can also be pretreated by magnetic separation before beneficiation.

Magnetic separation: The raw ore is crushed with a jaw crusher and a cone crusher, and then screened. Due to the low separation efficiency of these particles during dry magnetic separation, the fraction of fine particles with a size smaller than 74 μm should be directly transferred to the flotation process. The coarse particle fraction with a particle size greater than 74 μm should be sent to a dry magnetic separation process where the recovered ferromagnetic and diamagnetic elements are ground and sent to the flotation process together with a fraction of the fine particles.

Practice shows that the pretreatment stage improves the grade of the target element, and the economic benefits of the whole process will also increase accordingly, and the cost of the whole process can be saved by 20% or more.