Beneficiation routes for upgrading iron ore tailings with a teetered bed separator

The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility of producing sinter/pellet grade concentrate from iron ore tails. Two different wet flow sheets were considered. The first consists of a teetered bed separator (TBS) followed by a gravity concentration resulting in a product quality with 65.54% Fe, 4.96% SiO2 and 1.50% Al2O3 content ensuring 68.52% iron recovery. In the second option, the iron ore tail is treated in a similar approach, but the gravity concentration replaced by magnetic separation results in a product quality with 65.34% Fe, 3.70% SiO2 and 1.00% Al2O3 with 70.91% of iron recovery.