Titanium Ore Processing

Type of titanium

1. Rock Ore Titanium: Rock ore is primarily composed of titanium-containing composite iron ore, which has a dense structure, making it challenging to mine and select. The TiO2 grade of the titanium ore is improved through a multi-stage process involving crushing and screening, as well as gravity separation, magnetic separation, electric separation, and limited flotation methods.
2. Alluvial Ore Titanium: Alluvial ore consists mainly of ilmenite, with smaller amounts of rutile, white titanium, and anatase. It is commonly found in association with minerals like zircon and monazite, and the heavy sand minerals exist in a finely grained state. Silicate minerals dominate the gangue. In production, a combined process of gravity separation, magnetic separation, and electric separation is primarily used for processing alluvial ore titanium.

Certainly! Here is a re-description of the three types of titanium minerals without expanding the explanation:

1. Titanium-Magnetite: Titanium-magnetite is commonly found as inclusions within magnetite and non-metallic minerals. To process this type of ore, the general principle is to discard the tailings as much as possible and then perform grinding and magnetic separation on the titanium concentrate.
2. Hematite-Titanium Type: Hematite-titanium ore is fine-grained and tightly symbiotic. Only a mixed concentrate containing titanium can be selected for beneficiation. Subsequently, pyrometallurgical methods are used to obtain pig iron and high-titanium slag.
3. Perovskite-Titanium Magnetite: Wet weak magnetic separation is typically employed to select titanium magnetite. Then, a fatty acid collector is used to float calcite and remove the intermediate ore, allowing for the flotation of titanium.

Titanium Beneficiation Process

1. Gravity Separation: Gravity separation utilizes equipment like jig concentrators, spiral chutes, and shaking tables to remove gangue minerals from crushed ore. This method is suitable for coarse-grained embedded titanium and fine-grained collectively disseminated titanium.
2. Magnetic Separation: Magnetic separation takes advantage of the weak magnetism of titanium to separate it from non-magnetic minerals. It is commonly used for iron removal operations to enhance the titanium concentrate grade and can also enrich titanium when present in small proportions with gangue minerals.
3. Flotation Separation: Flotation is an effective method to recover fine-grained titanium and obtain sulphide concentrates.
4. Electric Separation: Electric separation is primarily used to treat raw ore containing non-conductive impurities like titanium pyroxene. This method requires the titanium particles to be at least 0.04mm in size and may involve pretreatments such as heating and radiation exposure.
5. Combined Process: Titanium ores often consist of various minerals and impurities, such as rutile, zirconite, plagioclase, and sulfide minerals. Combined methods like magnetic separation + flotation, gravity separation + flotation, magnetic separation + gravity separation, and multi-step processes (gravity separation – magnetic separation – flotation – electric separation) are employed to improve grade and recovery rates, as well as enable the comprehensive utilization of minerals. This approach offers benefits such as large processing capacity, simple operation, lower equipment investment, and good beneficiation outcomes.

Titanium Processing Plant

The process for a rock titanium separation plant involves the following steps:

1. Coarse Crushing
2. Fine Crushing
3. Grinding
4. Magnetic Separation
5. Gravity Separation
6. Magnetic Separation
7. Dehydration

The equipment required for this process includes a crusher, ball mill, magnetic separator, spiral chute, shaker, thickener, and other equipment.

In addition, there are two additional steps:

1. Pre-selection: This involves selecting and discarding a portion of the tailings from the rock ore to improve the beneficiation capacity. Commonly used methods for pre-selection include magnetic pulley magnetic separation and dense medium cyclone for rough separation.
2. Iron Separation: By separating titanium-containing composite iron ore, iron concentrate or vanadium iron concentrate can be obtained for ironmaking, while effectively separating most of the iron and titanium. Magnetic separators are commonly used for iron separation.

After iron separation, the tailings are subjected to multiple stages of crushing and screening. Various methods such as gravity separation, magnetic separation, electric separation, and flotation are used to improve the TiO2 grade of the titanium ore.

The process for an alluvial titanium processing plant involves the following steps:

1. Washing & Desliming: The raw ore, if containing a lot of mud, undergoes washing and desliming using a hydrocyclone.
2. Grinding & Classifying: The materials with the appropriate particle size are sent to the ball mill through a conveyor. The ore powder discharged from the ball mill enters the classifier for classification.
3. Separation: The minerals discharged from the classifier undergo rough separation in a magnetic separator. The concentrate is selected through the rough separation and then enters the beneficiation process. If gravity beneficiation is performed directly, a spiral chute is used to obtain coarse concentrate containing heavy sand minerals. Subsequently, the coarse concentrate enters the magnetic separator for further separation. For ores like red gold, zircon, and rutile, an electric separator is used to separate them based on the difference in conductivity between different minerals.