Investigation of Thorium Preconcentration Process on 5th Anomaly of the Saghand Ore and its Optimization Using Statistical Method

The Humphrey spiral is one of the mineral concentration techniques based on gravity separation. In various mineral processes, the characteristics of concentration performance are indicated by the grade and recovery factors. These factors depend on appropriate selection of process parameters. In this work, The L9 orthogonal array is used in the design of an experiment based on multi-objective optimization method to achieve the maximum concentration grade and recovery. The input process parameters that have been considered are the feed size, feed rate, and feed solids. The results show that the Humphrey spiral can be considered as a suitable technique for the preconcentration of thorium. Accordingly, upon considering the parameters which are affecting the performance of the Humphrey spiral, the grade and recovery of thorium increase to 49 and 5 percent, respectively.