Amenability to Processing of Maganiferous Iron Ore

Abstract

Manganiferous iron ore from Karnataka state was investi-gated to upgrade the iron content with lowering of mang-anese in concentrate. Mineralogical studies show that it is comprised of microplaty hematite, martite, goethite, pyrolusite, cryptomelane and minor amount of quartz and kaolinite. The sample contains about 51.4% Fe, 4.75% Mn with 8.5% SiO2 and 2.8% Al2O3. The crushed to 1mm and 3mm samples were subjected to reduction roasting using produ-cer gas. The reduction roasting converts the hydrated iron oxide mineral into more magnetic materials which facilita-tes the magnetic separation at low intensity leaving manganese minerals in non-magnetic. The reduced products were subjected to magnetic separation at very low magnetic field to recover magnetite. The final concentrate contain-ing 64.1% Fe and 2.3% Mn is achieved with a yield of 73.5% from -1mm sample. This product can be blended with the low Mn- hematitic concentrate with 65% Fe to generate a pellet feed.