The St Austell rare-metal granite

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Table of contents

1 Introduction 
1.1 Scope of the study
1.1.1 The European Raw Material Initiative
1.1.1.1 Raw materials supply in Europe
1.1.1.2 Defining Critical Raw Materials
1.1.1.3 Applying the methodology : list of critical raw materials
1.1.2 CRMs (LREE, Nb-Ta, W) and Sn consumption
1.1.3 The STOICISM project
1.1.3.1 Project summary
1.1.3.2 Project partners and consortium structures
1.1.3.3 Task 2.6 CRM Recovery
1.2 Geological background
1.2.1 The Cornubian Sn-W province
1.2.2 The St Austell rare-metal granite
1.2.3 Similarities with granites-based kaolin deposits worldwide
1.3 Kaolin from St Austell
1.3.1 St Austell Kaolin deposits
1.3.2 Kaolin extraction
1.3.3 Kaolin dry mining processing
1.3.4 Waste management
1.4 Literature review
1.4.1 CRMs (LREE, Nb-Ta, W) and Sn as by-products
1.4.2 CRM-bearing minerals processing overview
1.4.2.1 Monazite processing
1.4.2.2 Cassiterite processing
1.4.2.3 Columbite-tantalite processing
1.4.2.4 Wolframite processing
1.4.3 Gravity concentration
1.4.3.1 Principle
1.4.3.2 The unit processes of gravity concentration/choice of equipment
1.4.3.3 Gravity processing of fine particles
1.4.4 By-product recovery of CRMs and Sn from kaolin production
1.4.4.1 Beneficiation of Sn as by product of Beauvoir kaolins
1.4.4.2 Previous work at St Austell
1.5 Study objectives
1.5.1 Scientific objectives
1.5.1.1 Process development for CRMs recovery from kaolin residue
1.5.1.2 Evaluate representativeness of process samples
1.5.1.3 Geometallurgy and by-product resource estimation
1.5.2 Industrial challenge
2 Materials and methods 
2.1 Materials sampling and sample preparation
2.1.1 Waste streams sampling for waste selection and characterisation
2.1.1.1 Sampling of waste streams
2.1.1.2 Sub-sampling and sample preparation
2.1.2 Micaceous residue sampling for metallurgical testing and variographic analysis
2.2 Chemical analysis
2.2.1 Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) analysis
2.2.2 X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis
2.3 Material Characterisation
2.3.1 Particle size analysis
2.3.2 Heavy medium separation
2.4 Mineral Characterisation
2.4.1 X-Ray diffraction (XRD) analysis
2.4.2 Zeta potential
2.4.3 Scanning electron microscopy
2.4.4 Electron microprobe analysis
2.5 Mineral processing
2.5.1 Sample pre-treatment
2.5.2 Gravity processing
2.5.2.1 Spiral concentrator
2.5.2.2 Shaking table
2.5.2.3 Falcon concentrator
2.5.3 Jar-tests
2.5.4 Froth flotation
3 Selection and characterisation of the most valuable stream
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Selection and characterisation of the valuable stream from WADM plant
3.3 Comparison with other locations
3.4 Conclusion
4 Sampling representativeness for metallurgical testing 
4.1 Introduction
4.1.1 Theory of Sampling
4.1.2 Classical variographic approach
4.1.3 On the multivariate aspects of heterogeneity
4.1.4 Application of multivariate variograms to process sampling
4.2 Materials and methods
4.2.1 Material sampling
4.2.2 Sample preparation
4.2.3 Chemical analysis
4.2.4 Particle size analysis
4.3 Results
4.3.1 Experimental individual variograms
4.3.2 Variograms on PCA scores
4.3.3 Multivariogram
4.3.3.1 Multivariogram applied to heterogeneity contributions
4.3.3.2 Multivariogram applied to PCA scores
4.4 Discussion
4.5 Conclusion
5 Gravity processing of the selected residue 
5.1 Gravity processing of the micaceous residue
5.1.1 Introduction
5.1.1.1 Gravity processing of low grade ores
5.1.1.2 Response surface method (RSM)
5.1.2 Materials and methods
5.1.2.1 Material
5.1.2.2 Chemical analysis
5.1.2.3 X-Ray Diffraction (XRD)
5.1.2.4 Gravity concentration set-ups
5.1.2.5 Experimental designs
5.1.3 Results
5.1.3.1 Spiral pre-concentration
5.1.3.2 Table testing
5.1.3.3 Overall performance of the tested flowsheet for metal recovery
5.1.4 Conclusion
5.2 Modelling heavy and gangue mineral size recovery curves in spiral concentration
5.2.1 Introduction
5.2.2 Materials and methods
5.2.2.1 Materials
5.2.2.2 Spiral set-up
5.2.2.3 Particle size analysis and modelling
5.2.2.4 Partition curve calculation
5.2.2.5 Design of experiments
5.2.3 Results
5.2.3.1 Size recovery curve modelling
5.2.4 Discussion
5.2.5 Conclusion
6 Processing of fines
6.1 Introduction
6.1.1 Froth flotation of monazite
6.1.2 Falcon UF concentrator
6.1.3 Effect of clay slimes on mineral processing
6.2 Materials and methods
6.2.1 Material
6.2.2 Jar tests
6.2.3 Chemical analysis
6.2.4 Zeta potential
6.2.5 Flotation
6.2.6 Falcon concentrator
6.3 Results
6.3.1 Selection of the dispersing agent
6.3.2 Flotation
6.3.2.1 Comparing flotation performance with different reagents
6.3.2.2 Enhancing flotation performance with dispersion
6.3.3 Falcon UF results
6.3.3.1 Saturation tests
6.3.3.2 Effect of rotation speed
6.4 Discussion
6.5 Conclusion
7 Towards a geometallurgical model 
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Materials and methods
7.2.1 Sampling
7.2.1.1 Sample processing protocol
7.2.1.2 Sub-sampling of core samples for calibration
7.2.2 Pilot-scale gravity concentration testing
7.2.3 Multivariate calibration/PLS regression
7.2.4 Methodology
7.3 Chemical database correction
7.3.1 Metal grade calibration
7.3.2 Multivariate LREE grade calibration
7.3.3 Relationship between some elements and oxides
7.4 Prediction of process performance
7.4.1 Effect of feed grade
7.4.2 Effect of particle size
7.5 Potential application to core sample data
7.6 Conclusion
8 General discussion 
8.1 CRM recovery process proposal
8.2 Evaluating project profitability
8.2.1 Capital costs estimation
8.2.2 Revenue
8.3 On the micaceous residue commercial potential
9 Conclusions and Perspectives
9.1 General Conclusion
9.2 Perspectives