Tungsten selection process and equipment of tungsten ore

2022-03-21

The color of wolframite ranges from light to dark, ranging from brown to black, with metallic or semi-metallic luster. The main components are tungsten, manganese and iron, and the tungsten content can reach more than 50%.

Tungsten selection process and equipment of wolframite
The beneficiation process of wolframite mainly includes five steps including “roughing – grinding – gravity separation – selection – fine mud treatment”.

1. Rough selection stage
Rough selection is usually done by hand selection. Wolframite is selected from raw ore according to the appearance of wolframite. No equipment is required at this stage, and only some experienced workers are needed to distinguish with the naked eye.

2. Grinding stage – rod mill

Grinding is an indispensable step in the ore beneficiation process. However, tungsten ore is brittle and easy to be crushed during grinding, so the common treatment method is multi-stage grinding.

It is better to choose a rod mill as the grinding equipment. First, it can avoid the problem of over-grinding. Second, the ore particles produced by the rod mill are uniform in size, and the size is in line with the particle size of the re-election.

3. Re-selection stage – Jig and Shaker

First, the qualified ore particles are screened into three grades of coarse, medium and fine, and then the jig is used for sorting. The fine-grained ore is jigged and then selected with a shaker. After the coarse and medium-grained ore is processed, it is ground again and then selected again, forming a cycle.

The shaking table is used for the separation of medium and fine tungsten ores, and the tailings selected by the shaking table can be discarded.

4. Selection stage – magnetic separator

After the re-election, the rough concentrate of tungsten also contains many valuable metals such as tin, molybdenum, bismuth, copper, zinc, tantalum, niobium, etc., so it is necessary to carry out another selection.

Select coarse-grained wolframite, use dry magnetic separator, and send the dried coarse concentrate to the magnetic separator to obtain pure tungsten concentrate.

5. Fine mud treatment
The fine mud of wolframite contains various associated metal minerals, and the selection process should be selected according to the material properties actually contained in the fine mud, such as gravity separation, flotation, magnetic separation, electric separation, etc. A combination of processes can also be used to recover tungsten ore and useful associated ores.