Settling characteristics of ultrafine iron ore slimes

The slurry settling characteristics are the most important to design a thickener in process industries. In this work, the iron ore slurry from the screw classifier overflow was used for the settling study. It was observed that the original slurry exhibited a low settling velocity and a turbid supernatant during the settling process. Commercial flocculating agents with anionic, cationic, and nonionic characters were used to improve the settling behavior of suspensions, which were added into the slurry at different ranges of slurry pH values, respectively. The settling results show that the use of flocculants increase the settling rate by several times. Compared with the cationic and nonionic flocculants, the anionic flocculant is more effective in enhancing the slurry settling rate. The small dose of the anionic flocculant is found to be more effective, but the other flocculants are less effective even at higher dosages. The simulation of an industrial thickener was carried out based on the laboratory settling data, and the appropriate design and selection parameters of the industrial thickener were estimated.