Abstract Grinding has become one of the most important unitary operations for producing pellet feed for direct reduction from low-grade ores and small liberation size, such as compact itabirites. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare two grinding circuits in an industrial iron ore plant, by evaluating the current operation through sampling, industrial data analysis and mass balancing. The flows analyzed were the grinding circuit, flotation throughput and desliming hydrocyclone overflow. In total, two grinding circuits were tested. One circuit had two mills installed in series, with the first mill operating in an open circuit and the second mill, in a reverse closed circuit. The second grinding circuit involved two mills operating in parallel, both in direct closed circuits. The results indicated that the parallel circuit produced 20% less slime than the series circuit, with an additional 4.3% throughput in the flotation feed. No circuit produced particles (> 0.15mm). The parallel circuit spent less 8.3% of energy by not using one of the hydrocyclone batteries.

Várias linhas de flotação de minérios oxidados de zinco já foram estudadas e, segundo a maioria dos pesquisadores, a flotação catiônica com altas concentrações de sulfeto de sódio, usando amina primária como coletor, tem sido a opção mais adequada para concentrar esses minérios. Nesse trabalho, investigou-se a aplicação de novos sistemas de reagentes para flotar o minério de zinco com willemita, em etapas de depressão de gangas, dispersão, sulfetização e flotação do zinco. Os testes de flotação, usando emulsão de amina com óleos vegetais e diesel, mostraram que a amina emulsificada apresentou um desempenho na flotação superior à amina não emulsificada, além de permitir uma redução significativa de sulfeto de sódio. Dos óleos vegetais estudados destacaram-se a mamona e o coco-babaçu, porém os resultados de recuperação foram inferiores ao óleo diesel.

Several approaches to the flotation of oxidized zinc ores were already studied, and according to most of the researchers, the cationic flotation with high concentrations of sodium sulfide, using primary amine as collector, has been the most appropriate option to concentrate this type of ore. In this work, the application of innovative systems of reagents to float willemite was investigated, including the stages of gangue depression, dispersion, sulfidization and zinc flotation. The flotation tests using amine emulsion with vegetable oils and diesel oil showed that the amine emulsion yielded a better flotation performance than that of amine without emulsion, besides allowing a significant reduction of sodium sulfide dosage. Among the vegetable oils studied castor and babaçu coconut oils yielded reasonable results, despite not leading to the same zinc recovery levels achieved with diesel oil.