A Simple Way to Limonite Purification

Limonite is an important raw material for steelmaking, and the main elements is ferric oxide, belonging to week magnetic iron ore. Since the iron amount is low in the original ores, it usually need purification beneficiation to improve  the limonite grade before being smelted. Here Forui Machinery introduce a simple limonite purification methods for your reference!

In the limonite production, the commonly used purification methods are strongly magnetic separation and gravity separation. And there are cases of flotation and magnetic roasting for limonite ore dressing, howerer, the methods bring big investment and higher processing costs, so that most of the small and medium enterprises won't accept that.

The magnetic separation makes use of the permeability differences between iron minerals and gangue. The limonite is weak specific gravity weak magnetic iron minerals, so it needs the strong magnetic separator with more than 15,000 gauss. Gravity separation is a beneficiation method that based on the different specific gravity between iron minerals and gangue. Obviously, the iron minerals' sepcific gravity is greater than that of gangue, so you can consider the gravity separation method for sorting and the commonly used equipment is jigging concentrator.

Although the strong magnetic and gravity separation method are the easiest way to purify limonite, but not all of limonite are suitable for these methods. Because there is specific demand on the nature and structure of limonite for the gravity separation or high intensity magnetic separation process. For example, high intensity magnetic separation method requires clear boundary between gangue and iron minerals, by crushing or coarse grinding achieving monomer dissociation and the particle size shall be greater than 0.5mm in case of monomer dissociation. Gravity separation not only requires clear boundary between gangue and iron minerals, but also needs obvious specific gravity difference between iron and gangue minerals, and by crushing or coarse grinding achieving monomer dissociation of iron minerals and gangue.