Celestite upgrading by jigs in presence of steel balls as ragging material

Gravity separation using jigs is widely used for coarse particle sizes separation. However, fine sizes reduce jig performance. In this study, the upgrading of celestite ore by jig was investigated at different size fractions in the presence of ragging material. Three size fractions, i.e., -15+2 mm, - 2.0 + 0.50 mm and - 0.50 + 0.08 mm were used. The steel balls were used, as ragging material, to improve the separation of fines as well as to improve the concentrate quality. The statistical design was used to correlate celestite grade and recovery with studied operating variables, i.e., the ragging number of layers, ragging balls diameter, and separation time, at a fixed water flow rate and stroke length. The design results indicated that the ragging balls diameter and their number of layers play an important role. The smaller the ragging balls diameter and the higher the ragging number of layers are the better the concentrate grade but the longer the separation time. A celestite concentrate of (> 95% SrSO4) with 74.5% recovery was obtained for - 2.0 + 0.50 mm size fraction at the optimum conditions; i.e., 3.1 mm ragging balls diameter, one ragging layers, and 15 minutes separation time.