A Geometallurgical Forecast Modelfor Predicting Concentrate Quality in WLIMS Process for Leveäniemi Ore

Abstract: Previous studies have suggested that Davis tube (DT) experiment can used to study wet low intensitymagnetic separation (WLIMS) for magnetic iron ores. But DT process has never been used to mapWLIMS process, specifically in a geometallurgical framework. This thesis work is a step towardsfulfilling this gap by studying the Davis tube experiment performed on 13 different samples fromLeveäniemi iron ore deposit. The methodology adapted to map WLIMS concentrate quality includesstudy and analysis of feed, DT and WLIMS. Analyses were made using experimental data, processingdata using some analytical tools, some data-processing tools and post processing tools. For coveringthe geometallurgical aspect the analysis was done for both elements and minerals. The results fromthis study has reviled that DT can be used to predict WLIMS concentrate quality to an acceptablelevel of confidence. Furthermore, results show that a combination of DT and WLIMS informationproduce very accurate and highly reliable models for predicting and mapping WLIMS concentratequality. This work serves as the first step towards studying an unexplored field pertaining to magneticiron ore concentrate and has opened door to possible future work that could take this work a stepfurther. Supplementing this study with more data from different sample is required not only tovalidate the model but also to make it better. A better modal mineralogy of the samples is needed tounlock the full potentials of mineralogical modelling approach used in this work.