Introduction to Several Ore Concentrators Used in Ore Beneficiation

In the ore beneficiation process, it is often necessary to removing the water containing in the ore particles precipitated from the ore pulp, which cannot go without dehydration equipment. In the ore beneficiation plant, the concentration of the materials is carried out in the continuously working ore concentrators and the commonly used ore concentrators are in the following:

(1) Centre Driving Thickener

The centre driving thickener is mainly medium and small sized. When the working site is insufficient but sufficient precipitation area is required, to reduce the floor space, save energy and reduce the infrastructure construction cost, centre driving thickener may be used. In recent years, some gold ore cyanide carburizing plants adopt two-layer and three-layer decantation washing and multi-layer concentrator which has the same structure and dehydration effect as center driving thickener, except that a set of scrubbing solution box is installed beside the concentrator and a set of scrubbing solution pipe is installed inside the machine.

(2) Peripheral Driving Thickener

Large-sized concentrator adopts peripheral driving method. The advantages of this machine include simple structure, convenient operation and maintenance and low power consumption and the main disadvantages of this machine include big floor space and low processing capacity.

(3) Sloping Panel Thickener

This is a new type of highly efficient concentration equipment and there is a rhombus box connected with a conical funnel. Ore pulp is fed into the space between the two layers of sloping panel according to the height of the whole box and flows upward across the gap of the upper layer sloping panel. In this process, the ore particles will settle and be separated out between the panels, for this reason, the upper layer of sloping panel is called concentration panel. The solid particles settled onto the panel will slide down under the gravity and fall into the gap of the lower layer and continue to settle. The sand setting will be discharged from the bottom mouth of the conical funnel. Sluice valve or sand draining mouth with different diameter can be used to control and adjust the discharging amount and density of the sand setting. The over flow will be discharged from the upper overflow chute.

The sloping panel thickener is widely used in dehydration, deslimming and ore concentrate concentration and the main features of this machine are simple stricture and high concentration effect. However, its discharging mouth is easily blocked, so that the process flow requiring high product density is not suitable to adopt it.