Determining the Correlation of Elements in the Mining Area of Sineqan in Markazi Province in Order to Be Used in the Feasibility Studies of Copper and Rare Earth Elements Processing

Sineqan mine, 25 km away from Delijan city (Markazi province), has shown important evidences of iron oxide ores containing copper, gold and rare earth elements (REE) in the early stages of exploration. In the present study, a low-grade sample of the mine from the albite zone containing 0.69% of copper and 223, 186 and 55 g/t of cerium, lanthanum and neodymium was processed and compared with the results of elements correlation in geochemical samples. Cerium, neodymium and lanthanum showed the highest correlation with each other and with the thorium. The correlation coefficient of light REEs with phosphorus was negative. The results of ammonium sulfate leaching showed that the occurrence of REE in the sample is not as adsorption on clay minerals and the study of the correlation coefficient of REE with aluminum and sodium in geochemical samples also confirmed this result. The results of leaching with H2SO4 showed that selective leaching of copper is possible. The low efficiency of leaching with H2SO4, HCl and HNO3 and the higher efficiency of 96% for leaching with cerium and lanthanum under acidic baking conditions showed that a significant part of REEs is in the form of refractory minerals. The concentration ratio of REEs in the magnetic concentrate was close to iron. According to the correlation analysis of elements in geochemical samples, the correlation of calcium with REE was in the range of -0.2to-0.3. In the flotation test, although the grade of calcium increased 3.5 times in the flotation concentrate, this was not the case for REEs. The results of this research can be used in similar cases in the early stages of exploration and processing feasibility studies.