Beneficiation of Indian Iron ores

Abstract

Comprehensive investigations were carried out on a pilot plant scale with representative samples of iron ore drawn from the various mines of India primarily with a view to finding a solution for the serious ore handling and screening problems encountered practically in all the iron ore mines in India during monsoon season, besides exploring their amenability to beneficiation. Iron ore containing laterite as the principal gangue constitutes the bulk of Indian reserves of iron ores and studies on this type of iron ore proved that all the ore handling and screening problems can be overcome by washing the run-of-mine ore after crushing to a suitable size followed by jigging of the resulting classifier fines, producing (1) a clean sized lumpy ore suitable for smelting in a blast furnace, (2) a free-flowing upgraded fines free from slimes suitable for iron making after agglomeration and (3) a rejectable slime containing 30-600 silica, 15-30% alumina and about 15-20% of the iron present in the test sample.