Improvement in Grade of Sericite Ore by Dry Beneficiation

A study on the dry beneficiation of sericite occurring in the Daehyun Mine of the Republic of Korea region as performed by applying selective grinding and air classification techniques. Quartz and sericite occurred in the raw ore as major components. The results of liberation using a ball mill and an impact mill showed that the contents of $R_2O$ were increased while $SiO_2$ was decreased in proportion to decreasing particle size. According to the XRD, XRF analysis and the EDS of SEM analysis, the ball mill gave a better grade product in $R_2O$ content than the impact mill when the particle size was the same. When the raw ore was ground by the impact mill with arotor speed 57.6 m/sec and then followed by 15,000rpm classification using an air classifier, the chemical composition of the over flowed product was 49.65wt% $SiO_2$, 32.15wt% $Al_2O_3$, 0.13wt% $Fe_2O_3$, 10.37wt% $K_2O$, and 0.14wt% $Na_2O$. This result indicates that the $R_2O$ contents were increased by 49.5% compared to that of the raw ore. From these results described above, it is suggested that hard mineral such as Quartz little ground by selective grinding using impact mill whereas soft mineral such as sericite easily ground to small size. As a result of that hard minerals can be easily removed from the finely ground sericite by air classification and the $R_2O$ grade of thus obtained concentrate was improved to higher than 10wt% which can be used for ceramics raw materials.

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