Geochemical and Behavioral Modeling of Phosphorus and Sulfur as Deleterious Elements of Iron Ore to Be Used in Geometallurgical Studies, Sheytoor Iron Ore, Iran

Abstract

Sheytoor Iron Ore deposit is located in Yazd province of Iran (Bafq). The most abundant ore is magnetite, which can be seen in the form of mass and granular tissue in various forms of self-shaped, semi-self-shaped and amorphous. The main purpose of this study is to identify the geochemical relationship of phosphorus and sulfur elements and also three-dimensional modeling of mineralization of these elements in iron ore. In order to achieve the research goal, methods such as k-mean clustering technique, concentration-volume fractal as well as block modeling with kriging estimator and Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolator were used. The model of geochemical behavior of phosphorus and sulfur elements compared to iron is of great impor-tance because these two elements are known as deleterious elements in mineral processing and steelmaking processes, which are the post-mining stages. Existence of geochemical model and identification of elements’ behavior towards each other play a key role in optimizing mining operations in order to achieve geometallurgical goals. The results of this study are the three-dimen-sional model of mineralization of iron, phosphorus and sulfur elements, separation of phosphorus and sulfur mineralization communities and also pre-senting the model of enrichment community of these two elements. All the results are in line with geometallurgical studies and can optimize the next steps by optimizing the mining process.