Study on the Process Mineralogy Characteristics of an Overseas Ferromanganese Ore and Its Separation and Utilization Techniques.

China's manganese ore import sources are relatively single, with an external dependency exceeding 90%. Despite China is rich in manganese ore resources, they are predominantly characterized by low-grade manganese ores with excessive iron content. The mineral composition is complex, the coexistence is close, the selectivity difference between minerals is small, and separation is difficult. In order to better develop and utilize ferromanganese ore, chemical composition analyses, SEM, MLA, X-ray diffraction analysis and other testing methods were used to conduct process mineralogy research on a overseas ferromanganese ore, and a separation and recovery exploration test was conducted on the ore. The results indicate that the TFe grade is 31.31%, the Mn grade is 9.09%, and the main impurity element Si0₂ content is 28.73% in the ore. The main valuable minerals in the ore are limonite, coronadite, and psilomelane, with contents of 49.57%, 8.60%, and 6.44% respectively; the main gangue minerals are quartz and barite, with contents of 29.01 and 6.24% respectively. The particle sizes of coronadite and psilomelane in the ore are restively line, with the -38µm particle size distribution reaching 74.59% and 62.54% respectively. Their monomer dissociation degrees are low, only 16.75% and 15.12%. Coronadite and psilomelane mainly exist in intergrowth, with the content of both poor and rich intergrowth above 40%. The two are more closely embedded with limonite. Most of the coronadite particles exist in limonite as tine-grained inclusions. Similarly, most of the psilomelane particles exist in limonite as inclusions or disseminated forms. These make it more challenging to dissociate the iron and manganese mineral monomers. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve effective separation of iron and manganese minerals by traditional mineral processing methods. With the process of "hydrogen-based mineral phase transformatiom magnetic separation", the ore can be treated. And the technical indexes of iron ore concentrate with yield of 54.08%, Fe grade of 58.35%, Fe recovery of 91.47% can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]