Feasibility of producing sinter fines from a low grade and fine grained hematite-goethitic ore

Abstract

Iron ore quality in India is deteriorating due to continual increase in consumption of good grade ores. It is imperative to use low grade iron ores to meet the current demand. In the Jharkhand-Odisha belt hematite ore containing significant amount of goethite material have difficulty in processing. In the present paper, response of a low grade hematite-goethitic iron ore to beneficiation for the production of sinter and pellet feed material has been investigated. The ore sample contained hematite as the major iron bearing mineral with considerable amount of goethitic material. The major impurities present were quartz and clay. The sample contained reasonable amount of hematitic with relatively coarse liberation, however, overall the sample was poorly liberated. This posed difficulty in producing concentrate with desired metallurgical performance. The modified strategy involved selectively recovering sinter fines with possible recovery of pellet grade material. Hence, the top size of the ore was kept at 5 mm and ore was subjected to scrubbing and washing, followed by classification. Beneficiation studies such as jigging, tabling and WHIMS were carried out on different washed products and results are discussed. A total of 32% with Fe 63.8% sinter material and a varied amount of pellet material could be achieved from low grade iron ore.