lithium ore mining processing equipment

Zenith provides effective lithium ore beneficiation equipment with high efficiency and low energy cost. The equipment is widely used in the beneficiation of lithium ores, such as spodumene, petalite, lepidolite and amblygonite.

Lithium ore beneficiation equipment

lithium ores are commonly found in Spodumene, lepidolite, petalite and amblygonite.  Zenith offers techniques exclusively designed for the processing of various lithium ores. The techniques include flotation, pyrolysis, magnetic separation and gravity concentration.

Spodumene flotation plant process

The flotation techniques of spodumene include positive and negative flotation, both of which are widely used in processing fine-disseminated spodumene. We often use positive flotation to processs podumene.

The first step of the technique is to grind ores into small particles. Then, in the alkaline ore pulp made by sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate, the spodumene will be recovered ahead of other minerals by stirring the dense pulp intensively. Next, washing the minerals repeatedly to clean the muds off it. Finally, adding collectors, including fatty acid( oleic acid) or other fatty acid soap into the pulp to recover spodumene. After these three concentration processes, we can get fine spodumenes of over 5%Li02 grade with a recovery rate of 70% to 75%.

Spodumene pyrolysis process:

Pyrolysis technique is mainly used to separate spodumene. The technique includes the following steps: First, crushing the materials into 50mm or 20mm sized particles. Next, sending the materials to the vibrating screen where particles larger than 0.3mm will be burned for one to two hours under the temperature of 1000 to 1200 celcius degrees(Particles smaller than 0.3mm will be processed with other techniques to separate spodumenes).

After cooling off the materials, the equipment will selectively grind, grade and refine the mixture. This technique is suitable for ore mixture that contains only a small amount of albite, calcite or mica, minerals that are prone to pyrogenic decomposition.

Lithium ore magnectic separation process

Lepidomelane and spodumene are the only minerals in lithium that has weak paramagnetism. In the mining industry, we ususally adopt magnectic separation as a supplementary to improve the fineness of spodumene ores. It is often utilized to dispose of iron impurities or to separate lepidomelane and spodumene from ore mixture.