«Mekhanobr Engineering» JSC (Russia):

Bogdanovich A. V., Deputy Head of Department,

Vasilyev A. M., Researcher, office@mekhanobr.spb.ru

Urnysheva S. A., Researcher

Laboratory, pilot-scale and commercial-scale dressability studies of different types of diamond ores, performed at «Mekhanobr Engineering» JSC in recent years, permitted to determine that disintegration of ore heavy and light fractions proceeds differently. In crushing kimberlite ore, –10+6 mm size fractions with density over 2.7 g/cm³ do not contain aggregates with free grains of garnets over 0.9 mm, while –16+10 mm size fraction with density over 2.7 g/cm³ does not contain aggregates with free grains of garnets over 1.5 mm. On the other hand, in –10+6 mm size fractions with density below 2.5 g/cm³, maximum size of garnet grains reaches 1.5 mm, and in –16+10 mm size fraction — 2.2 mm. Heavy components losses with different sizes of final dump tailings were studied in processing of large samples with total mass over 4000 tons. It was established, that in order to almost completely exclude losses of heavy components over 1 mm size, light fractions had to be ground to 2.5–3 mm size, while X-ray separation heavy tailings of –6+3 mm size do not contain diamonds larger 1 mm in aggregates, and their regrinding to 3 mm does not increase total recovery of diamonds. Similar results were obtained in the study of diamonds distribution in jigging machines products of –6+2 mm size under commercialscale conditions. Main losses of diamonds over 1 mm size were registered in light fractions, and not in X-ray separation tailings of –6+1 mm size. On the basis of the conducted studies, relationships regarding heavy components and diamonds losses with respect to diamond ores final disintegration size were obtained, providing for more rational organization of the ores disintegration and processing flow sheet.

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2. Dvoychenkova G. P., Minenko V. G., Kaplin A. I., Zuev A. V., Kovalenko Ye. G., Amelin S. A. Intensifikatsiya protsessa razrusheniya kimberlitovykh porod pri pererabotke almaznogo syrya primeneniyem v skheme samoizmelcheniya elektrokhimicheski obrabotannykh vodnykh sistem (Intensification of kimberlite rocks destruction process during processing diamond raw materials by application of electrochemically processed water systems in the selfcrushing scheme). Sovremennyye problemy kompleksnoy pererabotki prirodnogo i tekhnogennogo mineralnogo syrya — Plaksinskiye chteniya. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo soveshchaniya (Modern problems of natural and technogenous raw materials complex processing — Plaksin’s readings. Proc. of Intern. conf.). St. Petersburg, Roza mira, 2005, pp. 190–192.

3. Fedotov K. V., Nikolskaya N. I. Proektirovaniye obogatitelnykh fabrik. Uchebnik dlya vuzov (Concentrators designing. Textbook for higher schools). Moscow, Gornaya kniga, 2012, pp. 100–107.

4. Bogdanovich A. V., Vasilyev A. M., Zhivankov G. V., Larionov V. A. Obogashchenie Rud, 2008, No. 4, pp. 25–29.

5. Bogdanovich A. V., Vasilyev A. M., Zhivankov G. V., Larionov V. A. Obogashchenie Rud, 2010, No. 1, pp. 22–25.