The effect of using different comminution procedures on the flotation of Platinum-Group Minerals.pdf.doc

Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 731–736 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Minerals Engineering j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s ev i e r . c o m / l o ca t e / m i n e n g The effect of using different comminution procedures on the flotation of Platinum-Group Minerals q N.A. Chapman a,?, N.J. Shackleton a, V. Malysiak a, C.T. O’Connor b a Anglo Research, P.O. Box 106, Crown Mines 2025, South Africa b Centre for Minerals Research, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa  a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 25 October 2010 Accepted 7 January 2011 Available online 4 February 2011 Keywords: Platinum-Group Minerals Comminution Froth flotation Liberation  a b s t r a c t The use of High Pressure Grinding Rollers (HPGR) has been widely reported to have major benefits in the treatment of minerals such as iron ore and diamonds. To date there have been few investigations into its use in the treatment of ores containing Platinum-Group Minerals (PGMs). HPGRs are known to reduce energy consumption and wear costs and improve the throughput in the circuit. In the present investiga-tion the effect of the comparative use of HPGR and conventional crushing in combination with either dry or wet rod milling on the flotation of PGMs was studied using batch flotation. Previous studies of a base metal sulphide had shown that either HPGR or conventional crushing followed by dry milling produced the highest grades and recoveries (Palm et al., 2010). However in the present study it was observed that a similar treatment of Platinum-Group Minerals produced the poorest results and the highest grades and recoveries were obtained for the case of conventional crushing in combination with wet milling. The HPGR showed no advantages in terms of flotation performance and dry milling produced particularly poor flotation results. The feed and product samples were analysed using ToF-SIMS, XPS and MLA. The paper will prop