Six years ago, we successfully installed and commissioned a 24m fully automatic thickener at a magnetite ore processing plant in China. This equipment is specifically designed for the dry discharge of magnetite tailings, with a daily processing capacity of 1,000 tons. To address the challenges of high clay content and strong tailings viscosity, the thickener is equipped with an advanced rake torque monitoring and automatic alarm system, as well as an automatic rake lifting function. These features ensure safe and stable operation under complex working conditions. During the 6 years, the thickener have never stop by some mechanical failure.
In the actual process, the high-viscosity underflow discharged from the thickener is fed into a filter press for deep dewatering, and the resulting filter cake is disposed of via dry stacking. Meanwhile, the overflow water from the thickener and the filtrate from the filter press are completely recycled, achieving highly efficient closed-loop water management.
The follow picture shows the flowsheet of magnetite ore processing plant and the position of the thickener.
The overall mineral processing flowsheet of this plant is designed to be both scientific and highly efficient. The run-of-mine ore, with an initial magnetic iron grade of 5%–6%, is first crushed by a jaw crusher and a cone crusher, followed by dry magnetic separation to reject waste and preliminarily upgrade the grade to 15%. The material then enters a ball mill for grinding. After wet magnetic separation of the ground product, the grade is increased to 40%.
To achieve sufficient mineral liberation, the material is fed into vertical stirred mills for ultra-fine grinding to a fineness of P90 = 400 mesh, followed by further magnetic separation for purification. The final high-grade concentrate, reaching 66%, is then dewatered using a vacuum disc filter, providing premium feed material for subsequent smelting operations.
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