Lepidolite beneficiation process

Lepidolite is a common lithium-containing mineral with plate-shaped crystals. It belongs to the mica class and is an important raw material for extracting metallic lithium. Lepidolite cannot dissolve in acid, but it can react with acid after melting. Foam appears during the melting process accompanied by a deep red lithium flame. In terms of beneficiation, the lithium extraction process from lepidolite mainly includes: crushing, grinding, impurity removal, sorting, filtering and other aspects.

011. Lepidolite crushing process

Lepidolite ore is transported to the crushing workshop by a ore transporter. According to the analysis of the characteristics of spodumene, the commonly used crushing process is generally a two-stage closed-circuit crushing or a three-stage crushing process. The particle size of the material fed into the ball mill in the crushing process can be controlled to be less than 15 mm.

022. Lepidolite Grinding Process

The lithium extraction grinding stage of lepidolite can generally adopt one-stage grinding and classification or two-stage grinding and classification operations. Generally, the grinding particle size reaches -0.074mm, accounting for 70%~80%, which is better, depending on the actual mineral processing standards.

033. Lepidolite Impurity Removal Process

The lepidolite impurity removal process is mainly to remove iron-containing impurities. Therefore, this link is generally completed by magnetic separation equipment, mainly weak magnetic separation, to remove most of the impurities containing strong magnets.

044. Lepidolite Selection Process

In the lithium extraction selection stage of lepidolite, a combined selection method is generally adopted. As shown in the figure above, a combined mineral processing process of gravity selection-magnetic selection-flotation is adopted.

Among them, the gravity selection part uses the screw drop + shaking table selection method to select qualified lepidolite ore, and then uses a medium magnetic-strong magnetic method to remove Han Ni and iron impurities again. The obtained lepidolite rough concentrate is subjected to the flotation process to obtain qualified lepidolite concentrate.

055. Lithium extraction from lepidolite - filtration process

The filtration process of lithium extraction from lepidolite mainly uses various dehydration and filtration equipment to concentrate and dehydrate the hydrous lithium concentrate obtained after flotation to reduce the water content. The defiltration method of high-efficiency concentrator + chamber filter press is often used to reduce the final water content to less than 15%.

This article mainly introduces several common lithium extraction process flows from lepidolite. There are many lithium extraction technologies from lepidolite in actual mineral processing plants. The specific selection should be based on the results of mineral processing test analysis. Only by selecting the appropriate process flow can the ideal mineral processing indicators be obtained.

Now that the price of lithium has risen sharply, investors should be concerned about how to seize the opportunity to carry out lithium ore beneficiation efficiently and quickly. Xinhai not only produces various mineral processing equipment, but also is an enterprise that provides mineral processing general contracting services, that is, mining industry chain services. It can provide investors or mining companies with mineral processing tests, customized mineral processing plans, design of mineral processing processes and mineral processing plant construction plans, etc., and will provide mineral processing plant equipment installation and commissioning work and mineral processing plant operation and management services in the later stage.