Selective agglomeration of magnetite in entlandite-serpentine system and implication for their separation

In nickel sulfide processing, magnesium silicates (serpentines) can easily form slime coatings or hetero-aggregation on pentlandite surfaces, and hence decrease the pentlandite flotation rate and recovery. In this work, magnetic separation of pentlandite from serpentine using selective magnetic coating through adding magnetite fines as magnetic seeds was investigated. Interactions of magnetite-pentlandite and magnetite-serpentine were calculated by the DLVO (Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek) theory. The results show that the interaction of magnetite-pentlandite was obviously stronger than that of magnetite-serpentine with an external weak magnetic field (4776 A/m-1). Therefore, fine magnetite fractions selectively adhered to the pentlandite surfaces and enhanced its magnetism, resulting in being separated from serpentine by magnetic separation, which was further verified by magnetic coating-magnetic separation and SEM observations.