Tantalum Niobium Tin Processing Plant

Tantalum Niobium Tin

Tantalum is mainly used as a high-quality capacitor, and because of its good heat conductor, it can be used as a component of various heat exchangers and heaters, and can also be used in medical equipment due to corrosion resistance. Niobium has a high melting point and is mostly used in the aviation field. Because of its corrosion resistance, it is mostly used to improve the strength and corrosion resistance of alloy materials. Tantalum niobium carbide can be used as a superhard cutting tool.

With the depletion and increasing shortage of tantalum ore, tantalum in tin slag has gradually become the main source of tantalum in the world. Coltan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral in coltan is columbite and the tantalum-dominant mineral is the tantalite.

The beneficiation process of tantalum niobium ore is determined by the characteristics of its rare metal ore, the content of valuable components in raw ore, and mineral composition. At present, the commonly used beneficiation processes include gravity separation, magnetic separation, electric separation, flotation, and chemical treatment. Due to the extremely low content of tantalum and niobium in the ore, it is generally necessary to carry out roughing before concentration.

The Flowchart Explanation is as below.

• The vibration feeder is for feeding raw material to the jaw crusher smoothly and stably.
• A jaw crusher primary crushes big stone to a smaller size less than 100mm, then output goes to cone crusher by conveyor.
• The cone crusher is a secondary crushing machine for crushing rock coltan tin to about 30mm, then output sends to vibration screen.
• The vibration screen(with 30mm screen mesh size) for screening out below 0-30mm sending to the storage bin, oversize +30mm send back to cone crusher to crush again.
• The 0-30mm material on the storage bin will go to a hammer crusher as a fine grinding machine to grind material 0-2mm fine powder, so as to release the coltan and tin from the rock.
• The output 0-2mm slurry from the hammermill will be pumped to the jig separator to concentrate heavy coltan tin.
• The primary heavy concentrate ore discharged from the jig separator will be sent to the shaking table to concentrate again.
• The shaking table has an extremely concentrated effect for heavy minerals, in order to get a higher purity of coltan and tin, the middling from the 1st stage shaking table will go to the 2nd stage shaking table to concentrate again, so can reach the highest recovery ratio and high purity coltan tin mixture.
• All the 0-2mm coltan tin concentrate ore discharged from two stages shaking table will be sent to dewatering screen for dewatering water, then the concentrate ore will be sent to drying machine or dry in the sun depends on the customer.
• The dry heavy minerals mixture will finally be sent to a high-intensity 3pcs disc dry magnetic separator, the gauss is adjustable to separate out each heavy mineral, such as iron, ilmenite, hematite, coltan and tin concentrate, etc. so as can get high-grade coltan and tin ore, usually, final coltan and tin grade can reach about 60-65% maximum depend on raw material conditions.

200tph Tantalum Niobium Tin process introduction

1. The trucks load the raw material to the first vibrating feeder equipped with a 70mm grid sieve. The +70mm will be sent to the transfer silo by the 1st conveyors.
2. The 0-70mm material will be sent to the trommel scrubber with 8mm and 15mm screens to wash and separate. The 0-8mm material will be sent to the vibrating screen with a 2mm sieve to separate again. And 8-15mm materials will be sent to two jig separators to concentrate. The 15-70mm material will be sent to the transit silo too.
3. After vibrating screen separating, 0-2mm material will be sent to two jig separators, and each jig will be equipped with two shaking tables for further selection. 2-8mm material will be sent to two sets of jig separators to concentrate. 
4. The concentrate of 2-8mm and 8-15mm material after jig separating will be sent to the drying yard directly.
5. The material in the transit silo will be fed to the primary jaw crusher by the 2nd vibrating feeder under the silo. 
6. The output of the primary jaw crusher will be sent to the secondary crushing to crush to 0-20mm.
7. After secondary crushing, the material will be sent to the hammer crusher to crush to 0-2mm. The 0-2mm will be stored in a pool with water.  And then they will be pumped to the rest two jig separators equipped with two shaking tables for further selection.
8. All the concentrates of the shaking table will be sent to the drying yard to dry by the sun or other dryers. The dried  0-2mm contrate will be separated by the three-disc magnetic separator. In the end, magnetite, ilmenite or hematite, tantalum-niobium concentrate, and non-magnetic materials will be distinguished.