| Přispěvatelé: |
Swierczek, Zofia, Quast, Keith, Addai-Mensah, Jonas, Connor, Jason N, Li, Jian, Robinson, David J, Chemeca 2011: engineering a better world Sydney, NSW 18-21 September 2011 |
| Popis: |
Although 70% of the world's nickel resources are contained in laterites, nickel from such ore deposits currently account for only 40% of the world's nickel production. It is widely accepted that these deposits will need to be increasingly processed in the future. This paper reports the results of a detailed mineralogical study of a typical Australian nickel laterite ore. The investigation used both QEMSCAN and Quantitative X-Ray Diffraction to conduct the mineralogical analysis, and the results are compared to a chemical analysis. The correlation between chemical and mineralogical analyses for most of the dominant gangue elements including iron, silicon, aluminium and magnesium was acceptable. However errors larger than expected were observed when predicting the nickel distribution data among the major mineral phases. This was due to the relatively low concentration of nickel in the ores, and its wide dispersion among the major host minerals. Careful analysis showed the limit of nickel detection in iron oxide host mineral grains was around 4% under normal operating conditions. There are significant potential benefits achievable from upgrading low grade nickel ores prior to subsequent processing for recovery of values. The successful development of a beneficiation process is reliant on the laterite mineralogy and metal distribution characteristics. Refereed/Peer-reviewed |
