Experimental Study on the Recovery of Rare Earth from a Low Grade Rare Earth Tailings in Sichuan

Abstract

This is an essay in the field of mineral processing engineering. This study focuses on a rare earth tailing in Sichuan province. Mineralogy research shows that the distribution minerals of rare earth metal composition in the tailing are relatively consistent and the main minerals are bastnasite and synchisite. For the reason that the low grade of rare earth in the sample, only contains 1.06%, the gravity separation process is adopted to preconcentrate the rare earth minerals in the tailing to reduce the cost of processing. The floating-magnetic process is carried out on the preconcentration product with a self-developed mixed collector and water glass as inhibitor. The combined flotation process of "one roughing-one sweeping-three cleanings" and high intensity magnetic separation could obtain a rare earth concentrate with REO grade of 53.63% and recovery of 70.54% which successfully achieves the recycling rare earth from the low-grade rare earth tailings.

Keywords

• mineral processing engineering
• rare earth tailing
• preconcentration
• flotation
• magnetic separation