Performance evaluation of processing clay-containing ore in Knelson concentrator

Abstract Performance of some mineral processing operations is known to be impeded due to the presence of even a small amount of clays. The study was conducted to evaluate the influence of commonly encountered clay types, bentonite and kaolin, on the performance of Knelson concentrator. Artificially mixed slurries of magnetite, quartz and clay were used for the experiments. The results indicated that the influence of both clay types on the operation of Knelson concentrator was insignificant; the reason is probably that clay particles are transported to the tailing without entering the concentrated bed inside the concentrate bowl of Knelson concentrator. Both magnetite and gangue recovery were analysed by plotting performance curves using size distribution.