- Title
- Improved density fractionation of minerals in the REFLUXᵀᴹ classifier using LST as a novel fluidising medium
- Creator
- Lowes, C. P.; Zhou, J.; Galvin, K. P.
- Relation
- Minerals Engineering Vol. 146, no. 106145
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2019.106145
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- A hydrodynamic fractionation technique utilising the REFLUXᵀᴹ Classifier has previously been developed as an alternative to the sink/float technique. Although proven effective on low-density coal samples over a wide range of particle sizes using water or glycerol solutions as a fluidising medium, application of this technique to minerals has proven challenging due to the smaller variation in the buoyant weight force of the particles. This paper reports a step change in fractionation performance for dense minerals in a semi-batch REFLUXᵀᴹ Classifier using a non-hazardous dense liquid as the fluidising medium, i.e. an aqueous solution of lithium heteropolytungstates (LST). In this work, the REFLUXᵀᴹ Classifier fractionation produced using (i) LST (ρf ≈ 2400 kg/m³) and (ii) 70 wt% glycerol and water fluidising media in a system of inclined channels with a 6 mm perpendicular spacing were validated against sink/float data for a -2.0 + 0.090 mm sulfide gold ore sample. It has been found that the dense liquid promotes shear induced inertial lift at much lower shear rates, significantly improving the density-based fractionation performance of the system to align very strongly with the sink/float result. Conversely, both the water and glycerol solution were found to produce poor results.
- Subject
- REFLUXᵀᴹ classifier; density fractionation; washability; sink/float analysis; gold ore; dense liquids
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1410241
- Identifier
- uon:36151
- Identifier
- ISSN:0892-6875
- Rights
- © 2020. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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