Physical beneficiation of heavy minerals – Part 2: A state of the art literature review on magnetic and electrostatic concentration techniques

Recent advancements in the applications of heavy minerals by modern science, engineering, technological and metallurgical industries especially in the demand by nuclear/power industries have significantly increased over the decades. This is the reason for the criticality and co of products of heavy minerals and also necessitated their high demand by industries. The recovery of heavy minerals, such as Zr and Ti associated minerals from their deposits is dependent on extractive metallurgy of transition and refractory metals from complex minerals. Based on the effectiveness/efficiency of mineral concentration as well as metal extraction, several challenges have been encountered in their recovery process, especially in their separation from associated mineral impurities/gangue. This review is however focused on investigating magnetic/electrostatic physical processing techniques and their applications in the beneficiation/recovery of heavy minerals. This will therefore, serve as a tool in reducing process steps/extraction complexity involved in downstream measures of dissolution/hydrometallurgical processes of the minerals.