Enhanced vibration dewatering to facilitate efficient disposal process for waste fine flotation tailings

Waste fine flotation tailings (WFFTs) constitute a type of ore slurry consisting of fine tailing particles and beneficiation wastewater produced in the mineral flotation process. It can lead to resource wastage and ecological pollution due to irrational disposal process. This study aimed at recovering the useful building materials and water resources via reprocessing WFFTs by classification, magnetic separation, and dewatering processes. Vibration dewatering is essential and first step during the dewatering of product, which can aid in recovering beneficiation wastewater and reduce the workload of the subsequent dewatering operations, significantly lowering the energy consumption. In this study, a screen surface structure with variable elasticity was proposed to enhance the dewatering performance. Further, the response laws of moisture content with respect to the factors such as vibration intensity gradient, solid concentration, feed rate, and screen aperture size were systematically explored, and the advantages of the vibration screen in industrial dewatering were verified. The average moisture contents of tailings sand, magnetic material, and non-magnetic material were 17.43 %, 19.36 %, and 17.23 %, respectively. The breakthrough of the vibration dewatering technology ensured efficient and stable operation of the tailing disposal process, and thus the transformation of WFFTs into useful resources such as building sand, dry-mixed mortar, and building ceramics was successfully achieved. Interestingly, the beneficiation plant was expected to generate economic benefits far exceeding $2.6 million per year. This study provides a possible innovative path for building an environmentally-friendly mining enterprise.