The road to copper ore purification: from raw ore to concentrate

Flotation is generally used to extract concentrate from raw copper ore. Therefore, the entire copper ore beneficiation process includes grinding equipment, flotation equipment, classification equipment, drying equipment, etc. Since domestic copper ore contains a lot of impurities, In order to improve its application grade and resource utilization rate, it must be beneficiated and purified. Therefore, the application of copper ore beneficiation technology is becoming more and more common, improving the application grade of refined copper ore.

1. Coarsely chopped

According to the characteristics of copper ore, coarse crushing equipment generally uses jaw crusher. Jaw crusher can crush copper ore to 10-400mm. Depending on the model, the adjustment range of the discharge port is different. Since there are many jaw crusher models , which can comprehensively process coarse crushing, medium crushing and fine crushing of copper ore. The copper ore mined from the mountain is first evenly and continuously fed into the feed port of the jaw crusher through the vibrating feeder. Feed materials within the material range, and do not feed in oversized ores or other hard objects.

2. Finely chop

For fine crushing of copper ore, a cone crusher is generally used. The discharge particle size of the cone crusher is between 12-60mm. Compared with the discharge particle size of the jaw crusher, the cone crusher is more suitable for fine crushing of copper ore. Cone crushers are divided into standard type, short head type and medium head type. Choose the appropriate one according to the discharging requirements. The finished products crushed by the jaw crusher are screened by the circular vibrating screen, and the qualified particles enter the cone crusher for crushing.

3. Grinding

The copper ore ball mill is selected for grinding. The ball mill developed according to the grinding characteristics of copper ore is divided into 34 specifications with a production capacity between 0.65-615t/h. The copper ore ball mill mainly performs secondary crushing of copper ore, using the power of steel balls. The impact grinds the copper ore into small round particles, which is convenient for subsequent flotation processing. After being crushed by the cone crusher, it enters the circular vibrating screen for screening, and the particle size that meets the feeding requirements of the copper ore ball mill is screened out, and then enters the copper ore ball mill for grinding processing.

4. Grading

After the copper ore is ground and processed, a spiral polarizer is used for classification. In actual production, the spiral polarizer is closely connected to the ball mill. The finished products of the ball mill directly enter the classifier for classification. The spiral polarizer uses the sedimentation of objects with different gravity. The principle of different speeds separates weeds, mud, rot, etc. in the copper ore to improve the purity of the copper ore.

5. Flotation

Flotation is an important part of the copper ore beneficiation process. It mainly uses a flotation machine. The flotation machine uses chemical flotation to continuously stir and refine the foam, so that the minerals adhere to the foam and float to the surface of the slurry to form Mineralized foam is scraped out with a scraper to obtain copper ore concentrate. The processing capacity of the flotation machine is 0.18-20m³/min. The finished copper ore processed by the flotation machine is of high grade.

6. Drying

The copper ore concentrate processed by flotation enters the dryer for drying treatment. After drying, the ideal finished copper ore concentrate can be obtained.