Chloridization and Reduction Roasting of High-Magnesium Low-Nickel Oxide Ore Followed by Magnetic Separation to Enrich F
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TRODUCTION
BEFORE the early part of the twentieth century, nickel was produced mainly from laterite ores. The discovery of sulfide deposits shifted the focus to sulfides. However, with the gradual depletion of high-grade nickel-containing sulfide ores, considerable attention is again being paid to low-grade nickel laterite due to its abundance. Laterite ore deposits are formed by nickeliferous olivines via prolonged weathering and leaching processes and are mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions near the equator.[1,2] Generally, laterite deposits can be divided into three layers: the limonitic, saprolitic, and garnieritic layers.[3] The limonitic layer contains a significant amount of goethite, and the contents iron and nickel usually range from 40 to 60 and 0.5 to 1.7 pct, respectively;[4] these contents are suitable for hydrometallurgical processes, particularly the Caron process and high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL).[5,6] The saprolitic and garnieritic deposits are SHIWEI ZHOU, M.S. Student, BO LI, Associate Professor, HUA WANG, Professor, and BAOZHONG MA, Ph.D. Student, are with the Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, P.R. China. YONGGANG WEI, Professor, is with the State Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Clean Utilization, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, P.R. China Contact e-mail: [email protected]; CHENGYAN WANG, Professor, is with the School of Metallurgical and Ecological Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, P.R. China. Contact e-mail: [email protected] Manuscript submitted June 15, 2015. METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
magnesium-rich ores with magnesium and iron contents ranging from 10 to 20 and 10 to 25 pct, respectively; these deposits are amenable to pyrometallurgical processes such as rotary kilns-electric furnaces (RKEF), the Krupp-Renn process, and so on.[1,7,8] The complex mineralogy of laterites ores is not amenable to beneficiation by physical methods.[1,9] Thus, a number of investigations of low-grade nickel laterites ores have been performed. The microstructure and phase characterisations of laterite ore during reduction roasting and leaching were investigated by Rhamdhani et al.[10] which also conducted several thermodynamic calculations to analysis the phase transformations occurring during reduction roasting of nickel laterite ore;[11] Li et al.[12] studied the coal-based reduction mechanism of low-grade laterite ore; Kim et al.[13] calculated low-grade laterite to concentrate Ni by magnetic separation. Several researchers used sulfur-containing additives to upgrade low-nickel laterite ore by reduction roasting and confirmed that sulfur can significantly promote c Fe-Ni particle growth.[14–16] Although additives containing sulfur can effectively promote Ni grade and recovery,[17] the increased sulfur content in the ferronickel component adversely affects the thermal stress of the steel due to the formation of a l
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