Uranium ore beneficiation process

Uranium ore beneficiation is the process of separating, enriching and extracting uranium from uranium ore or uranium-bearing ore to obtain different forms of uranium products.

The separation method of uranium ore mainly includes chemical beneficiation and physical beneficiation. There are more than 100 kinds of uranium ore uranium minerals. Industrially important uranium minerals are mainly bituminous uranium ore, crystalline uranium ore, followed by calcium uranium mica , potassium vanadium uranium ore, silicon calcium uranium ore, hydrous uranium ore and titanium uranium. Mine and so on. The industrial types of uranium ore are: granite type, volcanic rock type, sandstone type, carbon-silica mudstone type, sedimentary rock type, quartz conglomerate type, and Proterozoic unconformity related type. The main producing areas of the world's uranium mines are Canada, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Australia, South Africa, Niger and France.

Process flow

The separation methods of uranium ore include chemical ore dressing and physical beneficiation. Most uranium ore is usually not subjected to physical beneficiation, but is directly extracted by chemical ore processing. For individual uranium ore, it is sometimes calcined before leaching; roasting can improve the solubility of useful components or improve the physical properties of ore and increase the leaching rate of uranium. On uraniferous metal sulfide ore concentrate generally mixed first selected, and then be separated leaching; or to re-floated single metal concentrate leaching, respectively, depending on the nature of the product tank, or a base or acid leaching leaching extract Uranium, or a portion of the tailings discarded after treatment. Uranium ore is iron-boron magnetic separation - re-election - classification process, respectively to recover iron, uranium, boron, high recovery rate. The uranium concentrate containing 0.15% to 0.20% of uranium is leached with 10.5% acid, and the leaching rate is as high as 98.5%.

Chemical beneficiation

The conventional processing of uranium ore is to first leach uranium from the ore. The leaching of uranium ore is acid leaching and alkali leaching. Acid leaching is suitable for silicate minerals with less acid-minding minerals; alkali leaching is suitable for uranium ore containing more carbonate minerals. In order to strengthen the leaching process, hot pressing leaching method is often used in the alkali leaching process; when the content of sulphide ore in uranium ore or ore dressing product is high, uranium is extracted by pressurized water immersion method; concentrated acid leaching is also one of the enhanced leaching methods.

Heap leaching is suitable for the treatment of low-grade uranium ore or waste ore with good permeability and small ore bodies far from the water and metallurgical plant. The acid leaching slurry is separated by solid-liquid separation or mud-sand separation, coarse sand washing, and then uranium is extracted and enriched from the clear liquid or slurry medium. For ore with low uranium grade, it is advisable to use clear liquid adsorption or slurry adsorption. The saturated resin is desorbed to obtain a qualified desorbent, and then chemically precipitated to obtain a chemical concentrate of uranium. For ore with a higher uranium grade, use clear liquid extraction or slurry extraction. After extraction, the uranium is back-extracted from the saturated organic phase to produce a nuclear-purified or high-purity uranium product. The leaching process of first adsorbing with a resin, desorbing the qualified liquid and then extracting is highly adaptable, and finally a nuclear pure product is obtained. After the alkali leaching slurry is separated and washed by solid-liquid, a clear liquid is obtained. The chemical solution can be prepared by chemical precipitation method; the high-purity concentrate can be prepared by the supernatant adsorption and desorption liquid precipitation method; the nuclear pure product can also be obtained by using the quaternary ammonium extraction-back extraction crystallization process; After acidification of sulfuric acid, it is processed according to the acid process. For the water smelting plant with both acid leaching and alkali leaching, it is suitable for the acid-base mixing process.

Physical beneficiation

Some uranium ore is physically demineralized prior to hydrometallurgical processing.

1. Improve the uranium grade of the water and metallurgy and abandon part of the tailings. In the uranium ore physical beneficiation technology , radioactive sorting has been successful. The principle process of radioactive picking is usually two-stage sorting: In the first stage, the ore that is mined is transported to a radioactive inspection station for picking by a mine car or truck, the ore is sent to a water and metallurgical plant, and the waste rock is used as a filling; The radioactive checkpoint is selected to be transported to the radioactive sorting plant. After crushing, sieving and washing, it enters the radioactive sorting machine and is divided into concentrate and abandoned tailings. The modern radioactive picker can handle a particle size range of 20 to value="160" unitname="mm">160mm. In order to improve the grade of water and metallurgy, some factories have adopted other physical beneficiation methods: heavy medium ore dressing can be used to discard some tailings; fine ore or radioactively sorted poor middle ore, after being crushed, can be enriched by flotation For magnetic uranium minerals, enrichment can be performed by magnetic separation. Some countries are stepping up research into uranium processes that produce “clean” tailings and no waste emissions due to environmental pollution from tailings. Canada's uranium ore in the Elliott Lake area was first subjected to sulfide ore flotation and strong magnetic field magnetic separation, which not only improved the grade of uranium, but also recovered radium and pyrite (the former is the radioactive source of tailings, the latter is in bacteria). A source of pollution of the radioactive acid produced by the action).

2. Grouping the original ore and processing the water and metallurgy separately. Some uranium ore contains various components such as carbonates and sulfides, such as direct acid leaching or alkali leaching, high reagent consumption, and low uranium leaching rate. First, the raw ore is grouped by flotation, and then separately processed by water and metallurgy, which can greatly reduce the consumption of reagents and increase the uranium leaching rate.

3. Comprehensive recovery of useful components. Comprehensive recovery of uranium, gold and pyrite in quartz pebbles conglomerate ore with uranium symbiosis. The order of recovery is: first post-gold uranium, or uranium after gold, and finally flotation of pyrite; The mine then extracts uranium from the concentrate and tailings after flotation.

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