Assessment of Silica Recovery from Metallurgical Mining Waste, by Means of Column Flotation

Abstract

The generation of mining waste commonly led to the use of spaces for its disposal. Challenges like mitigating the damage to surrounding communities have promoted the need to reuse, recycle and/or reduce their generation. Besides, these residues may become a source of materials, which are capable of being recovered and reused in several industries, minimizing the environmental impact. In the mining region of Pachuca, Mexico, waste from the mining industry have been generated for more than 100 years, which have a high SiO2 content that can be recovered for various industrial applications. This work aims to recover silica from a material of the Dos Carlos dam. A columnar system composed of two-stage of cleaning was used, considering a JLT (surface liquid rate) value of 0.45 and 0.68 cm/s, respectively; while the Jg (surface gas rate) value was 0.30 cm/s for both stages. Similar bubble sizes in the range of Jg 0.10 to 0.30 cm/s, with values between 0.14 and 0.16 cm in the first stage, and 0.05 to 0.06 cm in the second one. This provided a recovery of 75.10% for all the allotropic phases of silica (quartz, trydimite, and cristobalite) leaving a concentration of 24.90% of a feldspathic phase (orthoclase), as flotation tails.

Keywords

• silica recovery
• column flotation
• mining waste
• waste reprocessing