Benefication of Low Grade Iron Ore

Abstract

India occupies sixth position in the world's Iron-ore reserves and is one of the major Iron-ore producer and exporter due to availability of quality ore and skilled mining personnel. India's Iron ore reserve is around 25,249 million tons (MT) .Although India is blessed with large reserves of Iron ore containing average grade around 58% Fe, the performance of blast furnaces has been at lower levels in comparison with the developing countries. This has been mainly due to the presence of high levels of impurities such as silica and Alumina in the raw material contradicting to the blast furnace chemistry. Normally Iron ores with Fe content above 65% are desirable to achieve better productivity either in blast furnace or direct reduction. Due to non availability of quality Iron ore, the run-off-mine (rom) needs to be beneficiated to lower the impurities to improve the strength of sinter and pellet quality. The physical, chemical and metallurgical properties of lumps, sinters and pellets are important as they have a significant impact on furnace performance. Several techniques such as washing, jigging, spiral, magnetic separation, heavy media separation and flotation are being employed to enhance the quality of the Iron ore. Washing, jigging and classification are being carried out for the beneficiation of Iron ores in India. Considering the above facts the present investigation has been under taken to beneficiate slime containing 57% iron from the Kiriburu mines of Jharkhand .For this purpose slime from Kiriburu iron mines has been taken. These slime from Kiriburu have been beneficiated using various laboratory apparatus. Flow sheet is prepared using the results obtained from various experiment and has been presented and discussed in this dissertation.