Chemical and mineral transformation of a low grade goethite ore by dehydroxylation, reduction roasting and magnetic separation

The utilization of abundant low grade goethite (cc FeOOH) ores is potentially important to many countries in the world, especially Australia. These ores contain many detrimental impurities and are difficult to upgrade to make suitable concentrates for the blast furnace. In this paper, chemical and mineral transformations of a goethite ore were studied by dehydroxylation, reduction roasting in CO and CO2 gas mixtures, and magnetic separation. The goethite sample was taken from a reject stream at an iron ore mine from the Pilbara region, Western Australia. The roasting temperature range investigated was 400-700 degrees C. Chemical and mineralogical analysis was conducted using XRF, XRD, optical microscope, EPMA, and SEM. Magnetic separation was conducted using a Davis tube tester and a high intensity magnetic separator. The results show that reduction roasting can remove moisture and impurities but does not significantly change the Fe content in the feed. However, reduction roasting transforms goethite to hematite and eventually maghemite which can be recovered by magnetic separation, allowing upgrading. Further studies are needed to optimize the reduction roasting and correlate it with the magnetic separation to maximize the efficiency of iron upgrading. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.