120 TPD Fluorite Flotation Plant

Fluorite ore beneficiation methods include gravity separation and flotation, which are also divided into gravity separation equipment and flotation equipment. Gravity separation equipment refers to jigs, and fluorite flotation equipment is similar to other mineral flotation equipment, including crushers, etc.

The fluorite ore flotation process can be applied to difficult-to-select fluorite ores with complex ore properties, such as high mud content in the original ore, symbiosis of impurity minerals and fluorite, and fine particle size of useful minerals.

1. Grinding

The fluorite ore is crushed and ground to a certain particle size, usually below 0.1mm, to increase the surface area of ​​the mineral particles and facilitate the interaction between the flotation reagent and the mineral surface.

2. Water quality adjustment

Adjust the slurry’s pH value to improve the flotation effect. Regulators such as lime (CaO) or sulfuric acid are often used to do this. Fluorite flotation is usually carried out in an alkaline environment.

3. Reagent addition

Collector: Commonly used collectors include fatty acids, alkyl sulfonates, etc., which can selectively make the surface of fluorite ore oleophilic, thereby promoting the flotation of fluorite particles in the foam.
Inhibitor: Metal ions such as aluminum salts and iron salts are usually used as inhibitors to inhibit the combination of gangue minerals (such as quartz and feldspar) with foam and reduce the recovery of impurity minerals during flotation.
Foamer: Some surfactants can be used to help form a stable foam layer and increase flotation efficiency.

4. Flotation

Through the contact between bubbles and pulp, the foam carries fluorite particles to the upper layer of the flotation tank, while gangue minerals settle to the bottom of the pulp. The key to flotation is to control the concentration of reagents and the size of bubbles at different flotation stages to achieve highly selective separation.

5. Treatment of concentrates and tailings

After flotation, the minerals that float up are called concentrates, which contain a higher grade of fluorite, while the minerals that settle down are tailings. The concentrates are further concentrated and dried to obtain the final fluorite product. The tailings can be piled up or further processed to recover other valuable minerals.

6. Optimization of flotation process

During the flotation process, it is necessary to continuously optimize the parameters such as the dosage of reagents, the concentration of pulp, and the size of bubbles to improve the flotation efficiency and reduce energy consumption and material waste.

Influencing factors
The flotation effect of fluorite ore is affected by many factors such as ore properties, pulp concentration, reagent type and dosage, flotation time, bubble size, etc., so it is usually necessary to conduct multiple tests to optimize the process conditions.

There are 3 parts in a full processing plant, including a crushing system, grinding system, and flotation system.

Main machines include the vibration feeder, jaw crusher, vibration screen, cone crusher, electromagnetic vibrating feeder, ball mill, spiral classifier, mixing tank, flotation machines, hydro cyclone, thickener, disc vacuum filter machine, etc.,

Crushing System

In the crushing part, we have a vibration feeder for feeding raw ore to the jaw crusher for primary crushing, the crushed materials are transported to the vibration screen by a belt conveyor, and materials larger than 20mm will be transported to the fine jaw crusher for secondary crushing, and then enter the cone crusher for the tertiary crushing. Finally, the crushed materials enter the vibration screen for screening, which forms a closed circuit.

Grinding System

In grinding part, 0-20mm materials are transported to a fine ore bin for temporary storage, the electromagnetic vibrating feeder under the fine ore bin will evenly feed the materials to the ball mill by a belt conveyor, and the ores become slurry after grinding by ball mill, and flow to a spiral classifier for particle classification, bigger than 200 mesh materials will be screwed back to ball mill for grinding again.

Flotation System

In the flotation part, the overflow slurry from the spiral classifier will flow to a tank and be sent to the mixing tank by a slurry pump, after mixing with chemicals, the slurry will flow to first-stage flotation machines, the concentrate will be sent to hydro cyclone group for particle classification, the underflow coarse particle will flow to another ball mill for grinding again, the overflow from hydrocyclone will be sent to secondary stage flotation machines, finally we get concentrate and can use thickener and disc vacuum filter machine to dewater them and get clean water and low humidity concentrate.

The capacity for this plant can be customized as per request such as 120tpd, 240tpd, 500tpd, etc.