Abstract
Approximately 30% of the world’s production of soda ash comes from mining and processing of naturally occurring deposits of sodium carbonate containing species. Of these deposits, the largest and most profitable have been the trona beds found near Green River, Wyoming. Processing of trona ores is water-energy intensive, particularly due to unit operations of calcination, dissolution, and evaporative crystallization to wield a high-quality dense soda ash product and reject the insoluble gangue species, primarily in the form of oil shale. However, it is speculated that the glass-manufacturing industry, the largest consumer of soda ash, may be able to use a product of a lower grade and consistent level of the insoluble constituents. Thus, pre-concentration of trona ore was investigated using sensor-based sorting, to produce a beneficiated trona stream that would be fed to calcination. The study encompassed preparation of a run-of-mine (ROM) Green River ore sample, selection of 25–75-mm-sized specimens, imaging of the specimens by x-ray transmission (XRT), color, and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF)-based sensors, insoluble analysis of the specimens, and a bench-scale sorting test. Results of the study established that a correlation between the color of the individual ore particles and their insoluble content existed and that a surface detection-based sensor, particularly LIF, was apparently more suitable than XRT to produce a beneficiated trona stream. The bench-scale sorting test demonstrated that a 65% separation efficiency and a 70% recovery of trona could be achieved.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend their appreciation to TOMRA Sorting Solutions for their essential contributions to this work, in particular the imaging analyses and bench-scale sorting test.
Funding
This work was funded by Tata Chemicals North America Inc., Green River, WY.
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Bellusci, N., Taylor, P.R., Spiller, D.E. et al. Coarse Beneficiation of Trona Ore by Sensor-Based Sorting. Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration 39, 2179–2185 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-022-00665-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-022-00665-2