Patent ID: 6805242
Filing Date: 2004-10-19
Classification: B03D,C22B,Y02P

Abstract:
A method of reducing phosphate ore losses in a desliming process comprising:directing a phosphate ore feed preparation slurry to a desliming unit; adding a sufficient amount of: one or more surfactants, wherein the one or more surfactants are anionics selected from the group consisting of salts of mono and divalent ions of general formula Râ€”X(m) wherein R is C6-C16 alkyl, alkylene, aryl, alkyl aryl, naphthalene, or substituted naphthalene, and X is sulfonic acid, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, or carboxylic acid, and m is 1 to 5, or one or more organic polymers selected from the group consisting of synthetic polymers, semisynthetic polymers, natural polymers and any combination of said polymers, or a combination of said one or more surfactants and said one or more organic polymers, to the phosphate ore feed preparation slurry; mixing said one or more surfactants, one or more organic polymers, or said combination of said one or more surfactants and one or more organic polymers, so as to reduce a viscosity of the phosphate ore feed preparation slurry and wherein fine phosphate ore particles are made to settle for recovery; collecting said fine phosphate ore particles which have settled out from the phosphate ore feed preparation slurry for directing to a beneficiation process for recovering a phosphate ore product; and directing said collected fine phosphate ore particles along with coarser fractions to the beneficiation process for recovering the phosphate ore product.