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SGS Minerals Services offers our bankable expertise in beneficiation, metal extraction, purification and recovery as well as:
- bench scale and extensive pilot plant facilities in Canada, Australia, Chile, and South Africa
- over 60 years of experience applied to developing a practical and cost efficient processing route
- high quality mineralogical and analytical services
Flotation is an incredibly robust and versatile process that works equally as well on mixed sulphide, oxide, silicate and other ores. Using standardized equipment, cutting edge mineralogy and experienced technical staff SGS Minerals Services will provide laboratory test programs which are designed to achieve your objectives quickly and efficiently. Strong ties with equipment and reagent suppliers ensures the most innovative, effective, and practical methods for mineral separation are applied.
FLOTATION FLEXIBILITY
Columns, mechanical cells, “flash” flotation and unit cells are regularly used in our evaluations. Other related equipment, such as stirred mills, ball mills, and high intensity conditioners, are also available. Techniques, such as new reagent development, control potential sulphidization (CPS), flotation kinetics, and computer modelling are also used.
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SULPHIDE FLOTATION
SGS Minerals Services metallurgical group has over sixty years of experience in the design and evaluation of sulphide base metal flotation regimes, with more than a thousand ores including the minerals:
- argentite
- arsenopyrite
- bornite
- chalcopyrite
- covellite
- enargite
- galena
- molybdenite
- marmatite
- mentlandite
- pyrite
- pyrrhotite
- sphalerite
- tetrahedrite
Polymetallic ores, such as copper-lead-zinc-silver-bismuth ores, are some of the most complex and SGS Minerals Services has practical solutions to separate these minerals.
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OXIDES AND SILICATE FLOTATION
Gravity, magnetic and electrostatic separation processes are the traditional treatment methods used for beneficiation of oxide minerals. Advances in flotation reagents can make recovery of oxides by flotation a more effective and economic process. Grinding and surface chemistry are critical to the success of oxide flotation. Over-grinding of the brittle minerals is avoided by stage grinding and careful selection of equipment.
SGS Minerals Services has experience in diverse regimes for treatment of a wide range of oxide minerals such as:
- barite
- cassiterite
- copper, lead, zinc carbonates
- fluorite
- ilmenite
- iron ore
- monazite
- other rare earth oxides
- phosphates
- potash
- rutile
- scheelite
- silicates
- spodumene
- tantalite
- topaz
- wolframite
- zircon
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OTHER MINERALS
Flotation is a robust process and new and innovative treatment processes have been developed by SGS Minerals Services. An example is the recovery of secondary minerals from tar sands. Other minerals that can be recovered by flotation include:
- coal
- metallic copper
- metallic silver
- platinum group elements (PGE)
Our experience in the PGE is particularly strong with process development, in-plant optimization and auditing of plants, for some of the world’s largest producers.
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LABORATORY AND PILOT PLANT EQUIPMENT
Laboratory Equipment
- A selection of rod mills, ball mills, and grinding media
- Denver and Agitair flotation cells
- Extensive reagent selection
- Eh/pH capability
Pilot Plant Equipment
- a wide selection of primary and regrind mills
- flotation banks suitable for 3kg/h to over 1000kg/h
- column cells from 2” to 12” diameter with DCS level control
- reagent pumps monitored and controlled through the DCS system
- standard and high-intensity conditioners
- thickeners, tailing pond, and recycle water capabilities
- pulp density and pH monitoring and control through the DCS system
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COMPREHENSIVE SUPPORT SERVICES
Downstream
SGS Minerals Services' full service laboratories can provide all of the expertise and equipment necessary to close the flotation flowsheet with grinding, thickening, filtering or leaching testwork.
Mineralogy
Mineralogy plays an important role in quickly troubleshooting and resolving operational issues. In particular, QEMSCAN technology offers a quantum leap in the understanding flotation processes. The QEMSCAN instrument rapidly and inexpensively analyzes hundreds of thousands of points on a polished section. This large data set is the basis for liberation studies, grade / recovery prediction and diagnosis, with greatly improved speed, detail and confidence over manual grain counting methods.
In a recent project at SGS Minerals Services, over $250,000 was saved by using QEMSCAN for prediction of grade-recovery variability in place of traditional locked cycle flotation testing.
Chemical Laboratories
SGS' full service analytical and environmental laboratories operate around the clock to provide key data to guide project decisions. Analytical instrumentation is linked to a networked data management system allowing speedy access by the project team worldwide.
Control, Party Umpire Analysis
Final locked cycle or pilot plant concentrates can be subjected to high-accuracy settlement analysis to determine if elements yield smelter penalties or precious metal credits.
Environmental Testing And Project Waste Disposal
SGS has unique environmental expertise, particularly in assessing potential environmental problems related to a proposed flowsheet. Environmental studies supporting flotation studies can involve acid base accounting, process water toxicity, leachate toxicity testing and effluent testing.
Project tailings can be disposed of by a third party contractor, following pertinent government regulations.
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SOPHISTICATED DATA MANAGEMENT AND ANALYSIS DATA
Distributed control systems and process control instrumentation are available in both Canada and Australia to control and operate the pilot plant grinding and flotation circuits. Rapid feedback is provided to refine operating conditions. On-stream particle size analysis, and chemical analysis, is provided by Outokumpu PSI and Courier instruments.
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FLOTATION EQUIPMENT
SGS MinnovEX provides leading-edge flotation equipment. Please click the links below for more information on the SGS MinnovEX flotation product line.
For more information, please contact our Flotation Experts.
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