Estudo dos impactos da mineralogia sobre a recuperação metálica de cobre na Mina do Sossego

Abstract

The copper production chain at the Sossego mine, in the city of Canaã dos Carajás, possess the stages of drilling, blasting, excavation, loading, transport, crushing, grinding, screening, cyclone, flotation, thickening and filtration. Flotation, the ore concentration process, is positioned as a decisive step for the performance of the metal recovery and it depends on several factors, among these are the aspects related to the ore that feeds the Plant, from the Sossego, Sequeirinho (phase 5 and phase 6) and Pista pit. The ores from these pits will be investigated in this study, with the goal of analyzing the impact of the mineral ogy of each of them on flotation, so it will be possible to predict and optimize recovery on an industrial scale. The methodology used was the performance of flotation tests on benches to define the performance of the ore from the Sossego, Sequeirinho and Pista pit in metal recovery for different feed percentages. Therefore, the ore from the Sossego pit obtained the highest recovery, for this reason it was considered standard to compare the other results, then there is a good recovery of Sequeirinho phase 6 , a drop in relation to the previous one in Sequeirinho phase 5 and a 10% lower result for Pista ore. The data generated a mathematical model in order to predict the results of the recovery as the percentage of ore feed is modified.