Coastal placer deposits, as significant mineral resources, contain valuable minerals such as zircon, ilmenite, cassiterite, and tantalite-columbite. Among them, zircon holds great industrial value due to its unique physical and chemical properties. This article describes the beneficiation process flow for zircon, offering technical reference for related industries.

I. Pre-treatment Stage

Run-of-mine ore first undergoes pre-treatment after mining. The rotating action of a trommel screen facilitates the washing and size classification of the ore sand. This step effectively removes surface impurities like clay and organic matter, creating favorable conditions for subsequent separation. Proper size control is a key factor ensuring separation efficiency.

II. Roughing Stage

The screened fine-grained ore sand enters spiral chutes for gravity separation. This process utilizes the density differences between minerals. Under the combined action of water flow and gravity, high-density minerals like zircon and ilmenite are concentrated in the concentrate trough. This stage achieves preliminary separation and pre-concentration of valuable minerals, laying the foundation for further cleaning.

III. Magnetic Separation

The concentrate from the spiral chutes is fed into a three-roll magnetic separator for magnetic separation. First, a medium-intensity magnetic field of 1500 Gauss removes strongly magnetic minerals. Subsequently, a high-intensity magnetic field of 8000-9000 Gauss separates out the ilmenite concentrate. After this step, the remaining material primarily consists of non-magnetic or weakly magnetic minerals such as zircon, cassiterite, and tantalite-columbite.

IV. Fine Separation

The non-magnetic tails from magnetic separation are further separated using a shaking table. The shaking table effectively separates gangue minerals like silica sand based on the differential movement of mineral particles on an inclined surface with flowing water, obtaining a mixed concentrate primarily composed of zircon along with valuable elements such as tin, tantalum, and niobium. This step significantly upgrades the zircon grade.

V. Final Cleaning

The mixed concentrate is dried and then fed into a three-disc magnetic separator for final separation. By precisely adjusting the magnetic field intensity, high-precision separation of zircon from minerals like tantalite-columbite and wolframite is achieved. This final step produces zircon concentrate that meets quality standards, while also allowing for the recovery of other valuable minerals as by-products.

This combined process flow offers significant advantages: it enables the efficient recovery of zircon alongside the comprehensive recovery of associated resources like titanium, tin, tantalum, and niobium; it allows for flexible adjustment of process parameters based on ore characteristics; the technology is mature and widely applicable.

In actual production, process parameters should be optimized based on the specific mineral composition and dissemination characteristics of the placer deposit to achieve the best separation results. This process scheme has been widely applied in the field of coastal placer deposit beneficiation, providing reliable technical support for the efficient utilization of mineral resources.