Study on kinetics of thermal decomposition of low LOI goethetic hematite iron ore

In the present study, the kinetics of thermal decomposition of hydrated minerals associated in natural hematite iron ores has been investigated in a fixed bed system using isothermal methods of kinetic analysis. Hydrated minerals in these hematite iron ores are kaolinite, gibbsite and goethite, which contribute to the loss on ignition(LOI) during thermal decomposition. Experiments in fixed bed have been carried out at variable bed depth(16, 32, 48 and 64 mm),temperature(400-1200 ℃) and residence time(30,45, 60 and 75 min) for iron ore samples. It is observed that beyond a certain critical bed depth(16 mm), 100% removal of LOI is not found possible even at higher temperature and higher residence time. Most of the solid-state reactions of isothermal kinetic analysis have been used to analyze the reaction mechanism. The raw data are modified to yield fraction reacted "α" versus time and used for developing various forms of "α" functions.f(α) is the inverse of first derivative of g(α) with respect to α. The study demonstrates that decomposition of hydrated mineral in hematite follows the chemical kinetics.The estimated activation energy values in all the experimental situations are found to high, of the order of 60 kJ/mol, reinstating that the reactions are indeed controlled by moving phase boundary and random nucleation.

Study on mixing and segregation behaviors in particulate fluidized bed system for mineral processing

In order to identify the mixing and segregation behaviors in a mineral processing operation, present study aimed on the hydrodynamics of solid–liquid fluidization. The study was carried out in a fluidization column with tapings at different height of the bed to collect the sample. The binary particles considered in this study are hematite(4800 kg/m3) and quartz(2600 kg/m3) at different size fractions in the range of average size 87×10^(-6)m to 400×10^(-6)m. It is observed that for various binary mixtures, both quartz and hematite particles share the equal composition by mass(50%) at a particular height of fluidized bed, referred as ‘‘locus point'' of mixing. Study indicates that the mixing zone volume will increase for a continuous fluidized bed plant operation. It is observed that the number of locus points varies from 1 to 3 signifying their dependency on the size ratios of binary mixture. Whenever, the difference in terminal velocity between quartz and hematite particles approaches to zero, mixing is enhanced.Further, the present study is extended to find the segregation index for the different size ratios of quartz and hematite particles. It is evident that depending on the size ratios, various regions such as complete segregation, partial mixing and complete mixing can be observed.