Phosphate Rock Beneficiation Process
Zexin provides professional Phosphate Rock beneficiation process solutions for efficient extraction and processing of Phosphate Rock mineral resources.
Phosphate Rock Beneficiation Process Flow
Based on the varying properties of phosphate ores, Zexin has developed multiple beneficiation methods, including flotation, scrubbing-desliming, gravity separation, chemical leaching, combined beneficiation, and optical-electrical sorting. Among these, flotation is the most widely applied phosphate beneficiation technique, with direct flotation, reverse flotation, direct-reverse flotation, and double reverse flotation options available depending on ore characteristics. Our technology is particularly suitable for structurally complex phosphate ores with intricate mineral occurrence relationships, fine dissemination, intimate intergrowth, prevalent mixed coexistence, and difficult liberation, enabling effective separation and concentration.
Zexin employs multi-stage crushing and grinding processes, formulating optimal comminution strategies for phosphate ores with different physical properties. Our crushing equipment reduces large ore blocks to appropriate sizes, while grinding equipment reduces material to ideal fineness, ensuring sufficient liberation of phosphate minerals for subsequent flotation. For difficult-to-liberate phosphate ores, we implement a staged grinding strategy, conducting preliminary separation after coarse grinding, then fine-grinding intermediate products, effectively avoiding over-grinding, improving separation efficiency, and reducing energy consumption.
Zexin's direct flotation process works by adding effective depressants to inhibit gangue minerals while using specific collectors to concentrate phosphate minerals in the froth. This method is particularly suitable for low-grade phosphate ores, including igneous apatite and sedimentary-metamorphic phosphorite. Our optimized reagent formulations and flotation parameters enable preferential flotation of phosphate minerals within complex mineral compositions, improving concentrate grade while ensuring high recovery rates. This process performs exceptionally well when processing oxidized and mixed phosphate ores.
Zexin's reverse flotation process is primarily used for efficient separation of phosphate minerals from dolomite. In a weakly alkaline medium, dolomite is preferentially floated by adding fatty acid collectors, leaving phosphate minerals in the cell to form the concentrate. The advantage of this process is that it can be conducted at ambient temperature, producing a cell product with coarser particle size that facilitates subsequent processing. Our reverse flotation technology precisely controls pH values and collector dosages to minimize phosphate mineral losses during flotation, particularly suitable for phosphate ores with high carbonate content.
Zexin's developed double reverse flotation process is an advanced technique that operates under alkaline conditions, utilizing mineral surface electrical property differences to first float dolomite using anionic collectors, then reverse float silicates, ultimately obtaining high-grade phosphate concentrate in the cell. This technological approach operates at ambient temperature with relatively coarse particle sizes, reducing energy consumption and simplifying the process flow. Double reverse flotation is especially suitable for complex phosphate ores containing both carbonate and silicate gangue minerals. Our optimized process parameters and reagent systems enable effective separation of multiple impurities, significantly increasing phosphate concentrate grades.
For phosphate ores with high clay content or containing coarse phosphate particles, Zexin employs scrubbing-desliming or gravity separation as pre-treatment processes before flotation. The scrubbing-desliming process uses specialized equipment to remove clay and oxide coatings from ore surfaces, improving subsequent flotation efficiency. Gravity separation processes utilize density differences between phosphate minerals and gangue minerals, pre-concentrating phosphate minerals through heavy medium separation, jigging, or spiral concentration to improve feed grade. These pre-treatment technologies, combined with the main flotation process, form a complete technological chain that significantly improves overall beneficiation efficiency.
Applications
Low-Grade Phosphate Resource Development
Zexin's phosphate beneficiation technology makes economic development of low-grade phosphate ores possible. Through precisely controlled crushing-grinding processes and optimized flotation parameters, our systems can produce qualified phosphate concentrates from raw ore with P₂O₅ content as low as 15%. This efficient concentration capability greatly expands the range of exploitable phosphate resources, providing new development opportunities for traditional phosphate mining areas facing resource depletion. Our low-grade phosphate processing technology, combined with energy optimization design, maximizes resource utilization while ensuring economic viability.
High-Silica Phosphate Ore Processing
Zexin's specialized reverse flotation process is particularly suitable for processing high-silica phosphate ores. These ores contain high silicate content, making ideal separation difficult with traditional methods. Our process employs specially developed depressant-collector combinations and optimized pH adjustment schemes to effectively inhibit phosphate mineral flotation while preferentially floating silicate minerals. Through precisely controlled multi-stage reverse flotation, silica content can be significantly reduced, producing high-quality concentrates that meet requirements for phosphate fertilizer and phosphate chemical production, providing technical support for comprehensive utilization of high-silica phosphate ores.
Carbonate-Type Phosphate Separation
Zexin's innovative flotation technology solves the technical challenges of carbonate-type phosphate ore beneficiation. In these ores, apatite coexists with calcite, dolomite, and other carbonate minerals with similar surface properties, making traditional processes less effective for separation. Our developed specialized collectors and modifiers can achieve preferential flotation of carbonate minerals under optimal pH conditions, leaving high-grade phosphate concentrate behind. This selective separation method has been successfully applied in numerous carbonate-type phosphate projects, not only improving concentrate quality but also enhancing acid consumption indicators in subsequent wet-process phosphoric acid production.
Comprehensive Phosphate Recovery
Zexin's integrated phosphate beneficiation systems focus not only on recovering the main phosphate minerals but also design comprehensive utilization schemes for associated valuable elements. Some phosphate deposits contain valuable elements such as rare earth elements, uranium, fluorine, and vanadium. Our combined beneficiation processes can effectively extract these elements through additional separation circuits and chemical leaching steps while recovering phosphate. This comprehensive resource utilization approach significantly improves the economic benefits of phosphate development while reducing tailings discharge, embodying the modern mining industry's pursuit of resource efficiency and environmental friendliness.
