Lithium ore beneficiation method

The mineral processing method of lithium ore is based on the mineral properties of lithium ore, mainly the physical, chemical, or physicochemical properties of different minerals, using different methods to separate lithium ore and gangue minerals and make the symbiotic useful minerals as much as possible A sorting process that separates each other and removes or reduces harmful impurities to obtain the raw materials needed to smelt lithium ore.

1. Hand selection method This method is mainly used to sort coarse-grained crystallized spodumene and lepidolite combinations. It is based on the difference between the color or shape of the mineral itself and the gangue minerals. The lithium mineral is selected from the minerals by manual hand selection. , using selective grinding and hand separation, which was the main beneficiation method for lithium ore before 1940-1941.
2. Thermal cracking method This method is to heat the spodumene ore to 1000-1200°C. After heating, the crystal form of spodumene changes, the relative density changes to 2.40, and it becomes a brittle and brittle ore. However, at this time gangs such as Quartz have not changed much. Then selective grinding is used to turn spodumene into powder. Gangues such as quartz that are not easy to grind are still relatively coarse. Screening or wind beneficiation methods are then used to make the gangue. of separation. This method can enrich spodumene raw ore containing 0.8%-2.0% lithium dioxide into lithium concentrate containing 4%-6% lithium dioxide, with a recovery rate of 70%-80%. However, this method requires high temperatures for roasting and cannot comprehensively recover other useful metal components, so it has certain limitations in practical application.
3. Chemical treatment method The Chemical treatment method is mainly used to extract lithium from salt lake water. When Ford Minerals of the United States extracts lithium from salt lake water, it first evaporates the salt lake water over an area of nearly 405 hectares. After evaporation, the lithium chloride concentration can reach 6%. During the evaporation process, sodium and potassium salts precipitate from the brine. Precipitates out, and the remaining lithium-containing solution is brine. This brine is introduced into the factory, and lithium chloride is converted into solid lithium carbonate using the soda ash method.
4. The relative density of spodumene in the heavy suspension liquid beneficiation method and the heavy liquid beneficiation method is about 3.2, which is higher than the main gangue minerals such as quartz and feldspar that often coexist with spodumene so the heavy suspension beneficiation method can be used to make spodumene a heavy mineral product and gangue minerals a light product.
5. Magnetic separation method. The magnetic separation method is an accessory measure to improve the quality of lithium concentrate. It is often used to remove iron-containing impurities in lithium concentrate or to sort weakly magnetic iron lithium mica. The spodumene obtained by the flotation method is used Stone concentrates sometimes contain a lot of iron and do not meet the requirements of some industrial sectors. To reduce the iron content, they can be processed by magnetic separation.