Concentration and recovery of valuable heavy minerals from dredged fine aggregate waste

Abstract

Inside the finest fractions of aggregates, usually wasted by ready mix concrete companies, valuable heavy minerals content is substantial. The concentration and recovery of valuable heavy minerals contained in dredged fine aggregates waste, located in Pyeongtaek South Korea, were investigated to develop a process that can recover and concentrate most of each heavy mineral. The raw material contains ilmenite, magnetite, monazite, and zircon. A gravity separation, recirculating the middlings recovered ilmenite, magnetite, monazite, and zircon with 44.05%, 36.90%, 53.76%, and 69.7% respectively. Nevertheless, a magnetic separation followed by gravity separation of the non-magnetic fraction further improved the recovery of ilmenite, magnetite, monazite, and zircon to 86.96%, 85.09%, 91.06%, and 90.82% respectively. This concentrate was separated at different magnetic intensities. Magnetite was concentrated at 0.05 T, resulting in a recovery of 23.4% and grade of 95.1 wt%. Ilmenite was at 0.4 T, with a recovery of 55.2% and grade of 84.2 wt%. Monazite was at 0.9 T, with a recovery of 59.3% and rare earth oxide content of 45.2%, the non-magnetic fraction has a high zircon content, the recovery was 70.6% and grade of 91.8 wt%.