Filtration of Iron Ore Slime using Synthesized Co-Polymer

The present paper reports study on filtration of iron ore slimes using the co-polymer synthesized by grafting polyacrylamide chains on starch backbone. The efficacy of the synthesized polymer was tested for the filtration of iron ore slimes following flocculation. The filtration rate increases with increasing flocculant dosage. However, the improvement is marginal at higher flocculant dosage. The filtration rate decreases with increasing pulp density and/or increasing pH. The filtration efficacy of synthe-sized polymer is comparable with the imported one, Magna-floc 1011 at neutral pH. At the alkaline pH, the initial rate of filtration is higher with Magnafloc 1011 compared to the synthesized polymer. The turbidity of filtrate is, however, more than 500 NTU in the former case. The filtra-tion data fits Kozeny's equation at constant pressure.