New ideas for rutile ore sorting technology

Rutile is relatively pure titanium dioxide, generally containing more than 95% titanium dioxide. It is an important mineral raw material for refining titanium, but its reserves are small in the earth's crust. Most of the iron components in ilmenite are separated and the titanium-rich raw material produced has the same composition and structural properties as natural rutile, making it a high-quality substitute for natural rutile. Ilmenite is the basic raw material for the production of artificial rutile. Mainly due to the depletion of natural rutile reserves, especially high-grade rutile. Although most rutile and hematite are closely related to each other, sorting them is extremely difficult. However, it is a new idea to continuously optimize the technical route for the selection of minerals such as rutile, quartz, and mica.

Rutile is one of the main titanium-containing minerals. Rutile can be produced in gneiss, pegmatite, eclogite (sparkle) rock bodies and placer deposits.

Artificial rutile refers to the use of chemical processing methods. Ilmenite is the most important titanium ore and the main source of titanium dioxide. By separating most of the iron components in ilmenite, a titanium-rich feedstock is produced that has the same composition and structural properties as natural rutile.

86% of natural rutile ores are primary ores with low grade, fine particle size, and complex mineral composition and distribution relationships. This determines that rutile ore processing should adopt a joint beneficiation process.

Rutile beneficiation process

Typically, rutile ore is found in beach sand and ilmenite, along with a variety of other minerals. Such as magnetite, hematite, quartz, feldspar, mica, hornblende, graystone, siderite, garnet, chromite, apatite, etc. Separation generally uses gravity separation, magnetic separation, electric separation and flotation.

1. Gravity separation

Rutile (TiOz) has a density of 4200 kg/m3, often symbiotic with quartz, tourmaline, garnet, etc., and can be reliably enriched by gravity. This method is generally used for rough selection of titanium-containing placers or crushed titanium-containing primary ores. The purpose formula removes most gangue minerals and enriches useful minerals.

Since the density of titanium-containing minerals is generally greater than 4g/cm3, most of the gangue minerals with a density less than 3g/cm3 are removed by gravity separation during the sand ore roughing process. In the sorting of rutile ore, gravity separation is usually used for operations such as desliming and tailings. A drum scrubber or hydrocyclone is usually used to discard most of the slime. The spiral chute, shaking table, etc. can be used to remove gangue minerals such as quartz, tourmaline, garnet, and white titanium from rutile ore to achieve the enrichment of coarse-grained rutile.

2. Magnetic separation

Magnetic separation method is widely used in the separation of titanium-containing minerals. We can use weak magnetic field magnetic separators to separate magnetite, ilmenite and other magnetic products from coarse concentrates. In order to separate ilmenite from other non-magnetic minerals, strong magnetic separation can be used. In industry, both dry magnetic separation and wet magnetic separation are used.

3. Electrostatic beneficiation

It mainly uses the difference in electrical conductivity between different minerals in titanium-containing coarse concentrates for sorting, such as the sorting of rutile, zircon, monazite, etc. There are three types of electric separators used: roller type, plate type and screen type

4. Flotation separation

Mainly used for sorting fine-grained titanium-containing ores. Commonly used flotation agents include: sulfuric acid, tall oil, oleic acid, diesel and emulsifiers.