Process for removing iron from rare earth ore

May.31,2021

Rare earth minerals, also known as rare earth element minerals or rare earth metal minerals, mainly exist in the form of minerals in the earth’s crust. As the basic constituent elements of minerals, they exist in the crystal lattice of minerals in the form of ionic compounds and constitute indispensable components of minerals.

Rare earth minerals include lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium.

The use of rare earth ore

Rare earth elements have physical properties such as photoelectromagnetism. Adding trace amounts of rare earth elements to other materials can greatly improve the quality and performance of the product, and play the role of “turning stones into gold”. It is known as the “vitamin” of modern industry.

For example, in steel and non-ferrous metallurgy, adding a few thousandths (or ten thousandths) of mixed rare earths as additives can obviously eliminate the influence of harmful impurities and improve the properties of the alloy.

In terms of atomic energy, rare earth ore can be used as a neutron control rod, and its isotope can be used as a radiation source in flaw detection, medicine and scientific research. In addition, rare earth ore can also be widely used in glass, petroleum, textile, boot leather, dyeing, petrochemical, optics, laser, hydrogen storage, display panels, magnetic materials and other industries.

Introduction to the magnetic separation of rare earth ore for iron removal

The magnetic separation of rare earth minerals is aimed at some rare earth minerals with weak magnetic properties or rare earth minerals accompanied by magnetites. It uses the difference in specific magnetic susceptibility of rare earth minerals and associated gangues and other minerals and uses magnetic separators with different magnetic field strengths for separation. For example, in coastal placers, weak magnetic separation is used to separate ilmenite from monazite, or strong magnetic separation is used to separate monazite from zircon, quartz and other minerals. In the flotation of rare earth ore, sometimes in order to simplify the flotation process and save flotation reagents, a strong magnetic separation process is also used to pre-enrich the rare earth ore.

Rare earth magnetic separators have high magnetic field strength and are widely used for iron removal in mining (manganese ore, limonite, rare metals). They are suitable for wet separation of fine-grained ferromagnetic minerals, or to remove ferromagnetic minerals mixed in non-magnetic minerals. . When the pulp enters the magnetic zone, strong magnetic minerals are adsorbed on the surface of the cylinder, weak magnetic and non-magnetic minerals are thrown off and discharged, and the strong magnetic minerals adsorbed on the cylinder surface rotate with the cylinder and are taken out of the magnetic field. Flush the washing water into the concentrate tank to complete the sorting operation.