RECOVERY OF TAILINGS APATITE PRODUCED IN THE MAGNETIC CONCENTRATION OF IRON

Apatite is the most common phosphate mineral, in addition to being a non-renewable resource it is the only economically viable source of phosphorus for fertilizers and phosphate chemicals. Chile in 2016 produced 6,205 tons of phosphoric resource and in the same year it imported 230,738 tons. This makes it necessary to study technology to concentrate the phosphate minerals present in iron tailings, promoting productive diversification and decreasing the volumes of environmental liabilities. The effectiveness of a collector was analyzed in a tailings generated from the magnetic concentration of iron, which contains quartz, iron oxides, feldspar, carbonates and amphiboles. These phosphate minerals were concentrated by flotation, using sodium oleate and a synthetic reagent as a collector. This paper presents the results obtained with the AkzoNobel collector, called Atrac 2600 and shows that under conditions of flotation of 500 g/t of collector, 400 g/t of Na2SiO3 as disperser of gangue, a law of 20.1 is reached % of P2O5 with a recovery of 88.4%. These results obtained when compared with those of sodium oleate present better metallurgical results; it would allow it to portray the large volumes of iron tailings, which will result in a more sustainable mining