| Author(s) |
Paula de Freitas Marques Araújo, Patricia Magalhães Pereira Silva, Andre Luiz Vilaça do Carmo, Marcus Vinícius Lins Gonçalves, Raphael Vieira da Costa, Caio César Amorim de Melo, Adriano Reis Lucheta, Marcelo Montini |
| Abstract Scope |
Bauxite residue (BR) has being extensively investigated as a secondary source of raw materials such as iron, titanium, and rare earth elements (REE). However, the enrichment and recovery of particular elements are not a straightforward process, especially when it is present in the fine particle’s fractions (<100 μm). BR fines usually contains Fe, Si, Ti, Al, Ca, Na, Zr, V, among other elements, locked up into complex mineral phases. Hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical routes used for BR beneficiation have high recovery but prohibitive costs. On the other hand, gravity concentration methods are one of the oldest and economical ore processing operations, but its efficiency is not clear when tailings are handled. This work made an exploratory investigation considering three gravity devices - shaking table, spiral and centrifugal concentrators handling RB fines. The goal was to evaluate gravimetric methods as a pre-concentration step to improve BR interesting elements grade prior extraction process. |