Pathway to Prediction of Pyrite Floatability from Copper Ore Geological Domain Data

The depletion of mining resources forces the mining industry to process more heterogeneous and complex orebodies. The inherent heterogeneity of these orebodies and their relation to processing recoveries have received considerable interest in recent years. The properties of ores, such as mineral composition and association, are known to affect flotation performance. Even ores with similar compositions can vary significantly regarding their texture, where the same minerals can occur in different forms. Therefore, very careful geometallurgical planning is needed to overcome the recovery losses. Glencore’s Mount Isa Copper Operation has reported historical difficulties decreasing the copper losses associated with natural floatable pyrites. Understanding the rock properties of naturally floatable pyrites and how they relate to chalcopyrite losses is crucial for concentrator operations. The Mount Isa geometallurgy team is looking for proxies for predicting copper losses and natural floatable pyrites to improve mine planning. This paper presents an approach for predicting the collector-less flotation of pyrite, as well as chalcopyrite losses from rock properties. The statistical analysis between the rock quality and ore type gives an indication of the chalcopyrite losses and natural floatable pyrites, which has potential use in geometallurgy plans.