SMARTER GRAVITY SEPARATION USING THE KELSEY CENTRIFUGAL JIG

摘要

With relatively coarse grained and easy-to-process ore sources rapidly dwindling, smarterrntechniques are becoming more necessary for the continued success of mineral processing operations,rnwhile increasing environmental pressures also require more environmentally friendly solutions.rnGravity concentration has long been employed to pre-concentrate minerals using water, reducingrnor eliminating the need for less environmentally friendly processing techniques such as flotation.rnConventional gravity recovery devices however, operate in a 1 g environment with limited efficiencyrnin the separation of fine particles of heavy and gangue minerals. More recently developed centrifugalrnconcentrators operate in a multi-g environment and enable finer heavy minerals to be recovered, butrnalso exhibit limited separation efficiency due to the separations being based on solid particle massrndifferentials.rnFurther enhancement of gravity separation has been achieved using the Kelsey Centrifugal Jigrn(KCJ), which also operates in a multi-g environment, but separates minerals on the basis of specificrngravity differentials, using ‘ragging’ media and a pulsation mechanism, which maximises the effect ofrndifferential particle accelerations. This enables the efficient separation/recovery of minerals down torna particle size of ~6 μm and/or separation of minerals with a low specific gravity differential.rnThis paper presents details on the principals of operation of the KCJ, recent improvements in therntechnology and recent developments in modular KCJ plants, as well as some KCJ application areas,rnwhich offer smarter, environmentally friendly processing opportunities for the mineral processingrnindustry.