Objective and Scope and Importance of Mineral Beneficiation with special reference to India

By Sahil Bharti(077)Praveer Sharma(084) and Shubham Joshi(079)

Mineral Beneficiation

Mineral beneficiation is a process by which valuable constituents of an ore are concentrated by means of a physical separation process.

In simple words, Mineral beneficiation is a process to separate the economic minerals from the waste rock gangue. The difference of properties between the value minerals and the undesired minerals determine the method of separation

Mineral Beneficiation Processes

Sample Preparation

Comminution

Size Classification

Gravity Concentration

Froth Flotation

Magnetic separation

Optical Sorting

Importance of Mineral Beneficiation

Zero waste technology: Zero waste is a philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. No trash is sent to landfills and incinerators. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature.eg in metallurgy

Slag generated from iron and steel industry is used for producing slag cement, rail road ballast, road making etc.

Red mud generated from aluminium production can be used in land reclamation, as a raw material in the manufacture of bricks etc.

Key Benefits:

Saving money.

Faster Progress.

Supports sustainability.

Improved material flows.

Various process involved in obtaining different size of ore are:

Comminution : particle size reduction of materials. Sizing : separation of particles according to their size. Concentration : to increase the concentration of the

wanted minerals. Gravity concentration : separation of two or more

minerals of different specific gravity by their relative movement

To obtain desired size, grade, quality of minerals

Why so??

This distribution is a very important aspect in mineral processing. There are several issues associated with it. The most important is the fact that size reduction or

comminution is an energy intensive operation. Therefore, the final size distribution must not be finer than what is required for liberation.

The size distribution should be such that the amount of ultrafine in the distribution is minimum. This is necessary for the fact that processing fines is extremely difficult and expensive.

Grinding and agglomeration are the techniques for obtaining the mineral of desired size Basic agglomeration process are:

Nodulising

Briquetting

Pelletizing

Sintering

Recently research has been done in NRC

The spherical oil agglomeration technique developed at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) for cleaning and recovering very small coal particles can be simplified by combining the grinding and agglomeration steps such that the excess energy expended while grinding is used for mixing and agglomeration.

Utilisation of lean grade ore

A large quantity of low grade insitu reserve, dumped material and slimes are available for upgration.

To obtain upgraded concentrate proper liberation m=of mineral particles from gangue is necessary.

So they are grounded to finer size and then pelletized so it can be utilized appropriately.

Lets us take the example of a copper ore whose grade, or copper content, is only 1% by weight. Let us assume that the single copper mineral species in this ore be chalcopyrite, whose chemical formula is CuFeS2 Calculating from the atomic weights of these constituent elements, one part of copper entails 3.46 parts of chalcopyrite. Physical means of processing without chemical decomposition of chalcopyrite enables us to attain the copper concentrate whose ultimate copper grade is 1/3.46 = 0.29 = 29%. For a range of practical reasons to be discussed below, this ultimate grade of copper concentrate cannot be attained.

Separating harmful or undesired minerals

As beneficiation of minerals, also called mineral processing, implies processing of mineral resources to enhance its potential value to the benefit of the humankind. Hence due to environmental concern removal of harmful minerals from ores became necessary.

Mineral based industries possess great threat to the environment

Deforestation

Degradation of land

Groundwater pollution

Pollution of rivers

Generation of dust

Air pollution

Noise pollution

Radiation

Acid rain

Objective of Mineral beneficiation

The main objective of mineral beneficiation is reduce the degradation of environment and it can just be achieved by sustainable development.

Sustainable development – To use the resources in such a way that it should sustain for the future generations i.e. Using our resources and also saving them for the future generations.

This sustainable development can be achieved by

Minimum utilisation of resources – Resources are limited in nature and most of the resources are non- recyclable in nature.

 Use alternate sources or non-conventional sources of energy - Since resources are limited, so we have to rely mostly on alternate or non-conventional sources of energy.

Reuse and recycle – Using that resource which we can reuse and recycle. For example, steel is 100% recyclable and is a better option than plastic 

Zero waste technology - It means that the waste generated from any mineral based industry should be 100% utilised.

Scope of Mineral Beneficiation

With the advancement of world, new technologies have come up with new ideas of beneficiation of minerals so today scope of beneficiation has increased a lot.

Beneficiation of low grade ore is of most researched topic in today.

New technologies have also arrived that have made beneficiation an easier process unlike before.

The scope of mineral beneficiation

IT ELIMINATES UNWANTED CHEMIVAL SPECIES.

IT ALSO ELIMINATES PARTICLES OF DIFFERENT SIZES.

A LARGE QUANTITY OF LOW GRADE INSITU RESERVE, DUMPED MATERIAL AND SLIMES ARE AVAILABLE FOR UPGRADATION.

TO OBTAIN AN UPGRADED CONCENTRATE FROM THESE MATERIAL, PROPER LIBERATION OF MINERAL PARTICLES FROM GANGUE PARTICLES IS NECESSARY.

MAJOR IRON ORE PRODUCERS IN INDIA ARE EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITIES TO UTILIZE THIS LOW GRADE MATERIAL.

MAJOR TEST LABORATORIES AND INSTITUTES ARE ALSO ENGAGED IN DEVELOPING THE PROCESS FOR ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF RAW MATERIAL FOR IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY

Preparation of mineral particles

The principal steps involved in the preparation of mineral particles from a chemical standpoint are:- Liberation of dissimilar particles from each other. Separation of chemically dissimilar particles.

The principal steps involved in the preparation of mineral products valued for their physical structures are:- Reduction in size. Separation of particles of dissimilar physical character

Thus, it will appear that in every instance mineral beneficiation involves a size reducing or liberating operation or group of operations as a first step and a separating operation or group of operations as a second step.

References

Blogs and website of our professor Dr. Ranjit Prasad.

Website like met-solvelabs.com.

Grindtechmetals.com

En.wikipedia.org

And Google.co.in

Thank you to be a wonderful audience!!