Iron recovery from zinc mine tailing

The demand for metals has increased over the past few years, given the need to supply the production of goods worldwide. Thus, mining companies have been interested in optimizing these metal extraction processes, and this has become the subject of studies like that one which seeks alternatives to reuse waste that was previously deposited in dams, and today can be reinserted in the economic market. Besides this bias, environmental concern is also part of these studies since the reprocessing of these materials reflects lower volumes deposited in controlled dams.

Therefore, this project aims to develop a technological route using physical separation processes (magnetic separation and gravity separation) to concentrate the hematite contained in the willemite ore flotation process, and later recover metallic iron through the carbothermal reduction of self-reducing briquettes.