Cobalt Processing and Cobalt Processing Plant

How to beneficiate cobalt ore and choose the beneficiation process and equipment.

1. Overview of Cobalt Resources: Cobalt rarely exists as independent deposits; it mostly occurs in association with other elements. The main types of cobalt deposits include copper-cobalt deposits (mainly distributed in Africa, such as southern Congo and northern Zambia), cobalt-containing      copper-nickel sulfide deposits (mainly distributed in Canada, Russia, and Australia), and cobalt-nickel laterite ores.

2. Strategic Importance of Cobalt: Cobalt is a key strategic metal known for its great physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. Its an essential raw material used to make materials that can withstand high temperatures, resist corrosion, are super strong, and have strong magnetic qualities. You’ll find it being used all over the world! In our country, cobalt mainly goes into making cemented carbides, ceramics, magnetic materials, and rechargeable batteries. It's also important in producing high-temperature alloys and catalysts

3. Research on Mineral Processing Technology:

• Targeting Tough Copper-Cobalt Oxide Ores: When it comes to those tricky copper-cobalt oxide ores that are highly oxidized and full of clay, researchers are focusing on using effective combined collectors and inhibitors. These collectors can be used to efficiently solve the ore flotation problem and improve the recovery rate of copper and cobalt

• Asynchronous flotation process: for copper-cobalt oxide ores, the asynchronous flotation process is generally used. We first recover the copper oxide that is easier to flotation, and then concentrate the harder copper oxide by re-grinding to improve the recovery rate of cobalt.

• Middlings Regrinding: To deal  with the problem of high clay content in these ores—where too much grinding can create a muddy mess—we use middlings regrinding. This approach not only helps improve how well we can liberate and recover copper but also prevents overgrinding which cuts down energy usage .

4. Experimental Results:

• Full-Flow Open-Circuit Test: Taking tailings from KAMBOVE in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example,the open-circuit test showed that the copper grade of the copper concentrate was 13.47%, the cobalt grade was 1.23%, the copper recovery rate was 43.69%, and the cobalt recovery rate was 31.77% .

• Full-Flow Closed-Circuit Test: The closed-circuit test results showed that the copper grade of the copper concentrate increased to 11.52%, the cobalt grade increased to 1.095%, the copper recovery rate increased to 85.17%, and the cobalt recovery rate increased to 64.11% .

5. Practical Cases:

• SICOMINES Copper Mine Copper-Cobalt  Oxide Ore Beneficiation Test: This project is a world-class large-scale mining, beneficiation, and smelting joint venture project jointly established by the Chinese and Congolese (DRC) governments. It creatively adopts new technologies such as asynchronous flotation of copper in copper-cobalt oxides, middlings regrinding, centralized middlings re-election, and innovative high-efficiency mineral processing reagents, ultimately achieving a copper recovery rate of 85% and a cobalt recovery rate of 61% .