INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF PRE-CONCENTRATION ON THE FLOTATION OF A COMPLEX COPPER SULPHIDE ORE

Date

2023-9-11

Author

Kipdemir, Yavuz

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The importance of efficient copper beneficiation increased with the demand for more copper in the world. Thus, low grade copper orebodies and previously rejected copper waste from higher grade orebodies are now ready to be beneficiated in an economical manner. The beneficiation techniques of copper ore consist mainly froth flotation for sulphide ores and acid leaching for oxide ores. Conventional flotation techniques of processing copper ore can be expensive for low grade copper ores due to the griding energy consumption and high reagent costs. Therefore, it is important to consider different low cost preconcentration techniques, such as gravity concentration methods, to increase the recovery of downstream flotation applications and to obtain concentrated copper in a more economical manner. This thesis reveals the benefits of the use of gravitational concentration techniques as pre-concentration in terms of copper recovery in the end product of copper sulphide ore concentration, and the economic benefits of the pre-concentration activity in copper sulphide ore concentration. Up to 60% of waste material has been rejected with around 84% recovery using Heavy Medium Separation method, and a pre-concentrate with 2.22% Cu grade has been obtained from a complex copper sulphide ore with 0.96% Cu. These results increased the overall efficiency of the downstream flotation applications drastically. While the flotation procedure done on R.O.M. ore yielded a concentrate with 18.12 % Cu grade with 72.63% recovery, pre-concentrate flotation resulted in a concentrate with 27.52% Cu grade and 89.05% recovery of copper. In an economical point of view, application of Heavy Medium Separation resulted in lower costs when it comes to reagent and power consumption and increased the revenues when compared with R.O.M. ore concentration. Within the scope of this thesis, it is shown that around 900 $/tonne net return can be realized with an effective application of pre-concentration by Heavy Medium Separation.

Subject Keywords

Flotation, Copper Sulphide, Pre-concentration, Heavy Medium Separation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105545

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis