LAUSR

Selection of a proper concentration method for a sustainable production of antimony metal from an ore deposit has its unique challenges and crucial of importance due to the growing use of antimony compounds and increasing strategic importance. Therefore, detailed laboratory scale beneficiation studies of a complex stibnite ore and modeling & simulation studies based on the experimental results were investigated within this study. Quantitative mineralogical characterization, chemical analyses, sieve tests and the heavy liquid tests were performed in the scope of ore characterization. Froth flotation, gravity concentration, electrostatic separation and ore sorting were conducted to introduce the best possible flowsheet for the individual industrial sample. It was concluded that heavy medium separation would be the only method can be used for subjected stibnite ore. Therefore, four conjectural beneficiation scenarios were tested by simulation studies for the cases proposedly allowing to produce concentrates having 10, 12, 14 and 16% Sb content. Within the simulation studies substantiating the real-life processing operation in terms of realistic performance figures, flowsheet design covered the processing of -10+0.5 mm fraction and relatively fine sizes separately via heavy medium cyclone and shaking tables, respectively. Following the itemized mass and water balances, the simulation results showed that when the grade of the concentrates were requested in between 10-16%, the total recovery of the concentrates changed between 46-49% in case of feeding 1.18% Sb with 20 tones per hour feed rate.