JSC «Uralmekhanobr» (Ekaterinburg, Russia):

Gazaleeva G. I., Head of Department, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, gazaleeva_gi@umbr.ru
Nazarenko L. N., Senior Researcher, umbr@umbr.ru
Shigaeva V. N., Junior Researcher, umbr@umbr.ru

The article describes the results of research on the development of a concentration technology for upgrading slime concentrates obtained from the tin tailings of the Solnechny GOK. The yield of slime concentrate is 39%, with 44.18% tin recovery and 58.72% copper recovery in the concentrate. Gravity and magnetic separation, flotation and hydroclassification were studied, with the latter and the gravity separation showing negative results. A specific concentration process flow was designed that includes stages of sulphide flotation, wet magnetic separation in a weak field, desliming, high-gradient wet magnetic separation, tin flotation, and table concentration. Copper flotation processes were studied with the use of three types of collectors, such as potassium xanthate, dithiocarbomate and Z-200 (China). The best results in closed experiments were obtained for the Z-200 reagent. The study of the tin flotation process enabled selecting sulfuric, oxalic and salicylichydroxamic (collector) acids, kerosene and high molecular weight alcohol as the suitable reagents. The characteristic features of both copper and tin flotation include product pretreatment in a rotary and oscillatory unit with the addition of a dispersant (hexametaphosphate). Implementation of the process flow proposed enabled obtaining the following commercial products from the rough slime concentrate:
— copper concentrate with the copper mass fraction of 18.23 % and recovery of 34.83% from the source raw material and of 59.32 % from the operation;
— tin concentrate with the tin mass fraction of 11.7 % and recovery of 27.83%. The total tin recovery into the concentrate from the slime and grain-based rough concentrates was 50.88 %, which is almost equal to the values of tin recovery from ore.

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