Institute of the Comprehensive Exploitation of Mineral Resources of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia):

Chanturiya V. A., Chief Researcher, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Professor, vchan@mail.ru
Chanturiya E. L., Chief Researcher, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Professor
Minenko V. G., Leading Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences
Samusev A. L., Senior Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences

The results of the laboratory and pilot-scale testing of electrochemical water treatment technology in processing of rare-metal ores from a Russian deposit, containing tantalum-niobates, zircon, quartz and feldspar, are presented. Water electrolysis acid product — anolyte (pH 2.5, Eh ~ 850 mV, [O₂] ~ 25 mg/l) was used as liquid phase. The tests corroborated a high effectiveness of anolyte application with a view to enhance the contrast range of minerals’ processing properties, contributing to improvement of tantalum-niobium ores flotation processing with hydroxamic acids. As a result of the laboratory studies, it was revealed that rougher gravity concentrate pretreatment in anolyte with subsequent liquid phase substitution and flotation in anolyte in acidic medium permit to increase Та₂О₅ recovery into flotation concentrate by 20.1 %, that of Nb₂O₅ by 23.5 % and ZrO₂ — by 18.3 %. With that, hydrochloric acid consumption is decreased from 1000 to 400 g/t of ore.
The studies were performed with the aid of the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research (the Grant 16-17-10061).

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