Study on mineralogical characteristics of fine flake graphite ore

Abstract

As the mining of large flake graphite is approaching exhaustion, fine flake graphite becomes the main resource for the future. The fine flake graphite ores in the Heilongjiang area of China are very representative of China. Based on a large amount of fine flake graphite in Luobei, Heilongjiang, China, the characteristics of the fine flake graphite have been studied by process mineralogical analysis. The study shows that the large flake graphite content in the raw ore samples in the Luobei area, Heilongjiang, China is about 16.81%, and most of the graphite exists in the form of fine flakes less than 150 μm. In addition, the main reason why graphite minerals are difficult to liberate is that the graphite flakes in the samples are interlocked with Muscovite. Some graphite flakes are distorted in the ore and it is easy to cause the flakes to be severely crushed during the grinding process which can affect the application value of graphite. A part of graphite minerals or gangue is distributed in the ore in the form of a fine disseminated state, which can result in a low grade of the flotation concentrate.

Keywords:

• Mineralogy
• fine flake graphite
• liberation
• pyrite

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Liaoning provincial government under Pandeng Scholarship and Grant No. LT2018010.