Parametric Optimisation for Filtration of Iron Oxide Concentrate

(A Detailed Analysis on Practical Plant practise)

ABSTRACT
The demand for iron ore has increased drastically in the last few years and is forecast to
remain on a stable high production level for years to come. It is expected that the existing and
known high grade ore resources will decline, and the iron ore industry will be forced to
implement more and more advanced beneficiation plants in which filtration is one of the
important stages. The filtration of fine particles derived from iron ore processing is a topic of
increasing importance to mineral industries. With little previous published work in this area,
it is difficult to predict how these materials will behave during filtration, in particular during
vacuum filtration. Conventional vacuum filtration methods have been the most prevalent in
fine iron ore dewatering. This paper describes effects of different parameters (pulp density of
the slurry, particle size distribution of the feed, rotation of ceramic disc and Basin number) on
filtration process. Performance of advanced filtration technology (Ceramic Disc Filtration)
for iron ore applications have been studied, and the findings are based on day to day plant
operation data and laboratory reports.

INTRODUCTION

India has emerged as the fourth largest steel producing nation in the world, as per the recent
figures released by World Steel Association in April 2011. In 2010, India was the 5th largest
producer, after China, Japan, USA and Russia and recorded a growth of 11.3% in steel
production as compared to 2009. Overall domestic crude steel production grew at a
compounded annual growth rate of 8.4% during 2005-06 to 2009-10. The Indian steel
industry accounted for around 5% of the worlds total production in 2010.
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Total crude steel production in India for 2010-11 was around 69 million tonnes and it is
expected that the crude steel production in capacity in the country will increase to nearly 100
million tonne by 2012-13. Further, if the proposed expansion plans are implemented as per
schedule, India may become the second largest crude steel producer in the world by 2015-16.
The demand for steel in the country is currently growing at a rate of over 8% and it is
expected that the demand would grow over by 10% in the next five years. However, the steel
industry in the country remains well below the world levels. Indias per capita consumption
of steel is around 50 kg as compared to 150 kg for the global average. This indicates that
there is a lot of potential for increasing the steel consumption in India.
Blast furnace productivity has gained momentum over the years with utilisation
of higher and higher proportions of quality agglomerates in the burden. It
has been observed that 1% replacement of calibrated lumps by agglomerated
products like sinter or pellet reduces the coke rate by 1.5 kg/t of hot metal
produced.
With high-grade Iron ore rapidly depleting, the necessity of Iron ore beneficiation is
becoming a reality. Beneficiation of Iron ore is much more economical than getting rid of
gangue at higher end of value chain like in BF or BOF / Electric furnace. It is believed that it
will cost 5 to 10 times more to remove gangue in BF / BOF or Electric arc furnace than in
beneficiation plant. In order to beneficiate, the Iron ore is needed to be crushed to the
liberation size to maximize the benefits from the process. Typically Iron ore is liberated when
the ore is ground to sub micron size.

Up-gradation of lower grade ores/fines necessitates beneficiation for making of

sinter and pellet. Any iron ore beneficiation process primarily is governed by
grinding, gravity separation, and filtration processes.
The purpose of filtration is either clarification of liquids or solids recovery. In clarification
the liquid is typically the valuable product and the solids are of minor quantity and are often
discarded without any further treatment. If however the solids are to be recovered, they very
often have to be washed, deliquored and dried. In this article, washing means the cleaning of

the product (filter cake) and is distinguished from cleaning parts of the filter itself, which will
be called rinsing (like rinsing a filter screen/filter disc or a filter cloth by jets of water).
The filter cake thus obtained need to have optimum moisture content for proper green ball
formation and needs to be dewatered. Generally, the term drying means thermal drying, but
the elimination of liquid from the filter cake by mechanical forces is called deliquoring or
dewatering. Filtration is effected by application of capillary, vacuum, pressure, or centrifugal
force.
Vacuum filters have the great advantage that the cake is freely accessible. This facilitates
automatic cake handling. However, vacuum filters cannot handle hot liquids, or solvents with
high vapor pressure. Also, the pressure difference across vacuum filters is very limited, and
the residual moisture of the filter cake is higher than that obtained with pressure filters.
Pressure filters in turn are preferred when the product must be kept in a closed system for
safety reasons, or if the residual moisture content is important. The handling of the filter cake
is obviously more difficult in a pressure filters. Filtration by centrifugal force requires more
expensive technical equipment, but as a general rule it yields solids with lower residual
moisture
Apart from the operating functions of the filtration system, the speed of filtration depend on
many factors of the slurry being filtered viz. amount of ultra fines, slime content like
kaolinite especially alumina content etc.
The present investigation deals with the investigations carried out on high grade iron ore
samples for filtration by ceramic filter. The results obtained from the experiments were
compared and presented in this paper.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Nowadays

pellets are frequently used as raw materials for iron making. The parameters

needed for proper pellet making needs to be identified and studied for optimum productivity
and desired quality. The important part of pelletization is green ball formation, and the
formation of green ball is interrelated with various parameters viz. properties of filter cake,

types of additives, inclination and RPM of balling disc, water addition for maintaining proper
moisture etc. The properties of filter cake for perfect ball formation have been discussed.
Major properties of filter cake of iron oxide for proper green ball formation for subsequent
pellet formation are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Moisture %
% of -10 (slimes)
% of -45
% of +150 (coarser grinding)
Blaine Number

The table below shows the physical & chemical parameter of filter cake & its range for
getting the best quality green ball.
Chemical& Physical properties
Parameter

Range

Fe( Total )

62.80 63.50 %

SiO2

3.00 4.00 %

Al2O3

1.90 - 2.50 %

LOI

2.70 - 3.50 %

+150

5.00 % max.

-10

20 25%

-45

60 to 65%

Moisture

9.0 10.0%
2

Blaine Number (cm /gm)

1800 2200

Filter cake Specification

1. Blaine Number and Grind
Blaine Number and Grind both represent the finesses of the particles in a sample. As the
fineness increases the Blaine number will increase and the grinding i.e. is amount of -45
micron particles in sample will also increases.Figure-1 clearly shows that the Blaine number
and grinding of filter cake varies simultaneously.

Figure 1: Variation of Grinding and Blaine Number

Blaine number is one of the most important parameters which determine the settling and
filtration behaviour, moisture content and balling formation in the balling disc. However, only
Blaine number may not be a true parameter as the presence of higher +150 micron and higher
-10 micron will give satisfactory Blaine number which will still be problematic for settling
and filtration and would have bad balling characteristics. Determination of Particle Size
Analysis (PSA) along with Blaine number will actually represent the grinding and the
suitability of the filter cake for the filter cake produced.
It is observed that as we increase the Blaine of filter cake the moisture in filter cake also
increaseswhichisshowninFigure-2

Figure 2: Variation of moisture with respect to Blaine no.

Thus from the above figure it can be clearly seen that the moisture is directly proportional to
the Blaine number of the filter cake. This suggests that to maintain a low level of moisture in
the filter cake, the residence time in the ball mill should be reduced. This will decrease the
unnecessary generation of ultra-fines particles and thus increasing the quality of the filter
cake. Moreover there should always be a closed circuit grinding adopted in comparison to the
general high reduction ratio open circuit grinding.

A study was conducted to asses the effect of Blaine/ grinding(-45 micron particle) on various
green ball factors. Figure 3 shows the effect of GCS with percentage fines. Initially it was
found to increase with increasing percentage of -45 micron size as the compaction increased
with higher -45 micron particles. But higher grinding also decreased the amount of coarser
particles which help in binding the smaller particles leading to decrease in GCS value of the
green balls. The study was carried out to determine appropriate grind time so that -45 micron
particle did not exceed 60 percent. Drop number as shown in Figure 4 depicts similar trend.

Figure 3: Variation of GCS with grinding

Figure 4: Variation of Drop Number with Grinding

The porosity of the pellets as expected found to decrease with increasing -45 micron size
fraction and is shown at Figure 5. Keeping a -45 micron fraction at around 50 55 percent
gave the highest porosity which will result in better reducibility.

Figure 5: Variation of Porosity with Grinding

From the above three plots it can be interpreted that as the Blaine/grinding increases the GCS,
Drop number of green ball increases and reaches an optimum point and then decreases while
on increasing the grinding the porosity of pellets decreases. Thus it can be deduced that the
Blaine/ grind value of the filter cake should be such that -45 micron particle range between
55 60%.
2. Coarse Grinding
The coarse grinding will lead to ease of filtration and decrease in moisture content but will
adversely affect the balling behaviour. The plot below (Figure 6) shows the variation of
moisture with increasing +150 micron size fraction present in the filter cake:

Figure 6: Variation of Moisture with coarse grinding

From Figure 7 it can be clearly seen that as the percentage of +150 micron increases it results
into decreasing the moisture content but the porosity of pellets leads to increase in CCS value
of the pellet, the ultimate product as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 7: Variation of porosity with oversize fraction

Figure 8: Variation of porosity and CCS

filter aid. The behaviour of the flocculated suspension and the performance of solid-liquid
separations are determined by the size of the flocs and by their structure. Large flocs promote
settling and are desirable for clarification and thickening.
3. Variation of different factors effecting Filter Capacity
Pant operation data was studied to analyse the effect of various factors on filter capacity as
that ultimately decides the filter cake productivity which is directly proportional to pellet
production.
One of the most important difficulties being faced while using Ceramic Plate filter is that the
pores of the Ceramic plates get choked with ultra fines present in Iron Ore fines and those
generated during grinding. To circumvent the problem it is suggested that Ceramic filter
boots should be provided with an overflow so that the ultra fines are over flown and does not

get access to the Ceramic plates. Also care needs to be taken to get the chemistry of back
wash checked to ensure proper cleaning. That way both choking problem can be reduced and
the life of Ceramic plate shall also increase.
4.1 Effect of Slurry density on Filter capacity
The data was captured for filter capacity with varying slurry densities. The capacity of
filter varied from 12000 to 35000 kg/hr during the thirty experiments conducted. The
capacity of ceramic filter increases with increase in solid concentration. This is easily
illustrated in the Figure 10. There is a change of nearly 900kg/hr when the slurry
density was raised from 50% (w/w) to 60% (w/w). So, to increase the total capacity
the solid concentration of the feed should be high.

Figure 10: Filter capacity with respect to slurry density

4.2Effect of Slurry density on the moisture content of the Filter Cake
The moisture percent of the filter cake varied from 9% to 11% during the thirty
experiments. Figure 11 illustrates that as the solid concentration increases the
moisture content of the filter cake also increases. This shows that increasing the solid
percent the moisture and filter capacity will move in opposite direction. Thus needs to
optimised in such a way that the productivity increases but the moisture content is
within a controllable value.

Figure 11: Moisture of filter cake with solid concentration

CONCLUSIONS
From the above experimental data & analysis it can be concluded that the filtration process is
affected by so many factors and getting all the parameter in one plane is a difficult task but by
controlling major factors we can achieve our desirable result in industry. Since our aim is the
formation of metallurgical grade pellet which can be achieved by proper proportioning of raw
material (i.e. filter cake, lime, bentonite & coke).
To understand the effect all the parameters of filter cake viz. the Blaine number (degree of
fineness), Presence of +150, Moisture, and Pulp Density on green ball formation were
studied and the following conclusions are drawn from the test results:
A. Increasing the Blaine Number of cake the moisture content increases. This is due to
generation of ultrafine during grinding. Thus, to maintain optimum moisture the
Blaine no. should be around 2000.
B. On increasing the fraction of +150 the moisture decreases and we get optimized
moisture cake but at the same time the GCS of green ball decreases which results in
poor CCS. Hence, for the good ball the +150 should be less than 3%.

C. High dosage of Flocculants will result in poor quality of filter cake i.e. when used to
make pellets, the green pellets become plastic in nature thus rather than breaking they
tend to change their shape.
D. Increase in moisture in filter cake leads to formation of uneven ball with low GCS
leading to low CCS. So for proper balling the moisture should be in the range of 8-10 %.
Table 2 indicates the optimized parameters to be achieved for better balling.
Sl. No.

Parameters

Optimum Point

Blaine Number and Grind (-45 Micron %)

2000 cm2/gm & 60-65%

Coarse Grinding (+150 Micron %)

Flocculant

Filter cake moisture

Filter feed density

Should be <5%
5gm/ton ()
9-10%
60% (w/w)

Table No 2. Parameters and their Optimum points