Resumen

DAVILA POBLETE, Gonzalo O.. Producción de Concentrados de Hierro de Alta Ley, Haciendo Uso de Columnas de Flotación. Rev. Met. UTO [online]. 2010, n.29, pp. 19-28. ISSN 2078-5593.

For many producers of iron minerals in the world, it is more important to sell pellets in a highly competitive international market, and also the ability of producing a high-quality product to a low cost. The high and growing demand of pellets that are suitable for direct reduction, has given space to the increment of many ore dressing inverse flotation plants in order to reduce as much as possible the silica content in the final concentrates.The technology of flotation in columns is preferred to reach this objective due to low capital and operational costs as well as the high metallurgical efficiency when it is compared with the conventional flotation process. The Canadian Process Technology Inc. CPT, has developed an inverse flotation process in column cells, for the concentrates production with the specifications of the contents for iron pellets which are suitable for direct reduction or for the blast furnace production. This process has been adopted for most of the iron concentrate producers in the world and actually the iron concentrates production for the direct reduction using column flotation designed and carried out by CPT is about 150 MTPY.This work describes the advantages of the flotation in columns and analyses some of the most important facts involved in the design of the circuit for the treatment of iron minerals.

Palabras llave : Flotation columns; iron ores; pellets; silica; foam flotation.