Modification of iron ore concentrator circuit to process high sulphur sample utilizing regrinding, Case study: Golegohar concentrator line no. 4

Nowadays, one of the intractable challenges facing the minerals industry is the processing of complex ores. Processing of high sulphur content ore type is a major challenge in iron ore beneficiation. Thus, modification of mineral processing circuits to process iron ore with high sulphur content is essential. In this research, employing a regrinding section in iron ore concentrator aiming to reduce the particle size and improve the quality of concentrate in Golegohar concentrator line no. 4 was investigated. In this order, two different configurations were studied including regrind mill after high intensity (rougher, cobber) and low intensity (recleaner) magnetic separators. To assess the results of the circuit configurations, iron and sulphur grade, yield and blaine of concentrate were considered. Furthermore, the effect of particle size fractions with the d80 of 38, 45, 63 and 80 μm in the configurations was evaluated to find optimum particle size. Results indicated that the desired particle size in the reduction of sulphur content is +63-80 μm. Furthermore, utilising regrind mill after cobber resulted in a higher iron grade, yield and blaine while lower sulphur grade was attained with the regrinding after recleaner.