Water chemistry effects in iron ore concentrate agglomeration feed

In two different iron ore processing plants, it was demonstrated that when magnetite concentrate was filtered to prepare it for use as pelletization feed, the moisture that remained in the filter cake had greatly elevated levels of cations compared to the water removed by the filtration process. In particular, calcium concentrations in the filter cake were 565 times higher than in the filtrate water in Plant 1 and 19.4 times higher than the filtrate water in Plant 2. This effect is due to the adsorption of divalent cations on the magnetite surfaces resulting from electrostatic attraction when the pH of the solution is in the range where magnetite has a negative Zeta potential. Measurements of the Zeta potential as a function of pH for magnetite from Plant 2 determined that its point of zero charge (PZC) occurred at pH 3.0 to 3.5, which was much lower than is commonly reported in the literature and demonstrates that the PZC for magnetite is much more variable than is commonly thought. Plant experiments were carried out using carbon dioxide to reduce the pH of filter slurry so that the PZC could be approached. This was intended to allow adsorbed cations to be released from the magnetite surfaces during filtration. The pH adjustment was demonstrated to improve filtration rates by as much as 23%.