Flotation of antimony ores with high arsenic content

Efficient evaluation of antimony ores, which are on the critical raw materials list due to the supply risk by the European Union, is an important necessity. In this context, ore preparation and enrichment processes are very important during the process from ore to metal. Especially for sulfide antimony ores, the most common beneficiation method is flotation. Therefore, antimony ore consisting of stibnite mineral obtained from Tokat-Turkey region was used in this study. Due to the low antimony (5.06%Sb) and the high Arsenic (1.38%As) content, it is an important requirement to increase the Sb content of this ore by flotation, as well as to reduce the As content to certain levels. Stibnite as an antimony mineral and arsenopyrite as arsenic mineral, are minerals that have a sulphurous structure in mineralization and their flotation properties are quite close to each other. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to selectively separate the bulk concentrate taken from rougher flotation by cleaning steps. A bulk sulfur concentrate with 24.54% Sb and 3.69% As content obtained as a result of the rougher flotation was obtained with a recovery of 98.9%. This product was subjected to 6 stages of cleaning flotation and a concentrate with a content of 63.8% Sb and 0.31% As was produced with an antimony recovery of 83% Sb.