Introduction to nickel ore dressing technology and equipment

Process introduction

Nickel ores are mainly divided into copper-nickel sulfide ore and nickel oxide ore. At present, the mineral processing method for processing copper-nickel sulfide ore is mainly flotation, while magnetic separation and reselection are usually auxiliary mineral processing methods.

Application area

The nickel ore dressing process can be applied to copper-nickel ore or nickel oxide ore accompanied by pyrite and a variety of other gangue.

Process introduction

Hybrid flotation process

It is used to select ores containing less copper than nickel, and the resulting copper-nickel mixed concentrate is directly smelted into high-ice nickel.

Mixing—optimal flotation process 

Copper-nickel is mixed and flotation from the ore, and then copper-nickel-containing copper concentrate and copper-containing nickel concentrate are separated from the mixed concentrate.After the nickel concentrate is smelted, high-ice nickel is obtained, and the high-ice nickel is then flotation and separated. 

Mixing—Optimize flotation and recover part of the nickel from the mixed flotation tailings

When the floatability of various nickel minerals in the ore is very different, after the copper-nickel mixed flotation, the nickel-containing minerals with poor floatability are further recovered from the tailings.  

Flotation process of copper-nickel ore

When flotation of copper-nickel sulfide ore, the collector and foaming agent of flotation copper sulfide ore are often used.A basic principle in determining the flotation process is that it is better to let copper enter the nickel concentrate than to avoid nickel entering the copper concentrate as much as possible.Because the nickel in the copper concentrate is lost a lot during the smelting process, the copper in the nickel concentrate can be recovered more completely.When the copper content in the ore is much higher than the nickel content, the copper can be selected into a separate concentrate.The advantage of this process is that copper concentrates with lower nickel content can be directly obtained.

Production example

A certain copper-nickel ore is a large metal symbiotic copper-nickel sulfide ore.A suitable mineral processing process was designed for it, that is, the process flow of three—stage and one-closed-circuit ore crushing, stage grinding, copper-nickel mixing-separation flotation, three-stage dehydration of nickel concentrate, and two-stage dehydration of copper concentrate was adopted.The flotation process of this process is relatively simple, the flotation time is long, the number of selections is small, and the concentrate is dispersed and selected at multiple points, so that the nickel minerals can be recovered as soon as possible, and the nickel concentrate content is as high as 12%, which has obtained good economic benefits.