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In recent years, recovering zinc from low grade oxidized zinc ore has been a matter of discussion. In this paper, the investigation for recovering zinc and iron from gossan ores was carried out. In generally, the conventional physical separation methods, such as flotation, gravity separation and magnetic separation, were used to treat the low grade ore, and flotation is the most commonly used method for beneficiation and pretreatment of oxidized zinc minerals. However, gravity separation and magnetic separation are used to deal with the gossan ores because of the special zinc oxide ore bearing iron 40.2% in this study. The effects of grinding fineness and magnetic intensity were investigated, respectively. The results show that the grade of zinc and iron increase slightly, and the best result is that the grade of zinc and iron are 13.35% and 40.25%, the recovery of zinc and iron are 53.45% and 52.19%.

Leaching test on the Oxidized Zinc Ore coming from Yunnan Province is studied in the H2SO4 system;Systematic studies are made to show the effects of various factors on the leaching rate of zinc. The optimum conditions for leaching is finally confirmed, namely the grinding size is 75% of-0.074mm, concentration of sulfuric acid 15%, temperature 60°C, solid to liquid ratio 3:1, and leaching time 2.5h. Ultimately, the leaching rate of Zn could reach more than 59%.

The flotation performance of a complex lead and zinc ore were investigated by changing the grinding environments. Four groups of testing were conducted with different depressants or their combinations. Flotation results, size-by-size analysis, pulp potential (Eh) and dissolved oxygen (D0) were studied. It was found that the addition of depressants during grinding was beneficial to increasing the separation efficiency.