How to Process Coltan Ore Mining Plant Effectively?

Wide Application of Tantalum and Niobium 

Tantalum and Niobium(Ta-Nb) as new materials can be applied in fields including electronics, precision ceramics and precision glass industry, electro acoustic and optical devices, cemented carbide, aerospace and electronic energy industry, biomedical engineering, superconducting industry, special steel and other industries.

In the electronics industry, tantalum metal can be used to make electrolytic capacitors. It has many outstanding characteristics, such as large capacitance, small leakage current, good stability, high reliability, good pressure resistance, long life and small volume.

In addition, tantalum is also used in the electronic circuits of national defense, aviation, aerospace, electronic computers, high grade civil electrical appliances and various electronic instruments.

In the metallurgical industry, Ta-Nb are mainly used as additives for the production of high strength alloy steels, improving the properties of various alloys and making super hard tools.

Main Distribution of Coltan ore mine in the world

The coltan ore mine site is widely distributed in China, Brzail , Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Venezuela, Congo, Australia, ect.  In different country and area, the coltan ore condition is different.

How to Process the Coltan ore mining plant effectively?

Coltan ore raw material has alluvial type and hard rock type , different type ore will use different processing method.

JXSC mine machinery Company in China has more than 30 years professional experience at coltan ore mining plant, design complete set process flowchart , provide full set coltan ore processing machines, and send engineer to mine site for equipment installation and commissioning guidance. Have already built many projects cases in Africa countries. Include: Uganda, Nigeria, Congo, Zimbabwe, Brazil,ect.

The processing capacity can be provided as per requested.

Below are the flowchart description that JXSC Engineer recommend for the coltan ore separation plant

Alluvial Coltan ore mining plant process flowchart

Feeding->washing->sieving->primary separation -> final concentration-> upgrading

Feeding: there has various kinds feeding way, depends on plant and material conditions . have choices of vibration feeder, hopper, belt feeder, or wheel loader and excavator feed directly to coltan washing machine. If there has big stone, can make grizzly bar on feeding machine or hopper to remove big waste stones.

Washing: firstly need to wash clean the clay and mud in raw material, most popular used are trommel scrubber coltan washing machine, coltan washing trommel screen or log washer.

Coltan washing trommel scrubber is for washing material that with much sticky clay, trommel screen is for wash raw material that without much sticky clay. Different ore condition , will use different washing machine.

Sieving: after washing, need to sieve out some bigger waste material,the underscreen slurry will go to next separation machine. This sieving machine can be trommel screen or vibration screen or high frequency vibration screen.

Primary separation: this process is for rough coltan separation, most often use coltan jig separator. The concentrate ore from them will go to final concentration machine.

Final Concentration: the concentrate ore from jig machine will go to coltan ore concentration machine shaking table for final concentration, can get high grade coltan concentrate ore.

Refining: if need very very high grade coltan, need to use the refining machine to upgrade it, usually can use high intensity dry magnetic separator to upgrade it, by removing other magnetic minerals and non-magnetic minerals, so can get much higher grade coltan.

Rock type coltan ore processing, the flowchart can be as below:

Feeding-> crushing->grinding->primary separation -> final concentration-> upgrading 

The feeding, primary separation, final concentration and upgrading process are almost the same as above alluvial coltan process.

Below are the crushing and grinding stage description:

Crushing: this process is for crushing the big stone to smaller size before grinding.

 crushers has choice of rough jaw crusher, fine jaw crusher, cone crusher, hammer crusher, roller crusher, depends on the rock feeding size and process capacity to use which kind crusher.

Grinding: after crush the coltan stone to smaller size, need to grind to power by ball mill or wet pan mill or other grinding machine, so the coltan can released out from stone. Then go to next coltan separation machine and concentration machine.

Some pictures of JXSC Mine machinery factory’s 100TPH alluvial coltan ore mining plant in Uganda: