Separation and Recovery of Iron from Vanadium Titanomagnetite with Polyetheramine Collector by Flotation Method

Vanadium titanomagnetite (VTM) is a complex polymetallic symbiotic mineral dominated by iron, titanium, and vanadium. Iron extraction from VTM is an issue for the utilization of Vanadium titanomagnetite concentrate. In this work, flotation method combined with magnetic sorting was proposed to separate and recover the iron resources from VTM. The reverse cationic flotation of iron ore in VTM was carried out with polyetheramine (PEA, molecular weight of 2000) as collector, and the differences of iron grade and recovery in VTM with different particle sizes were studied. The magnetic separation result shows that the iron grade of the magnetic part is 28.38% with the particle size 100–74 μm, which is 10% higher than the iron grade of the raw ore. The flotation results of magnetic separation products show that PEA-2000 can effectively separate and recover iron from VTM. The iron grade of the magnetic part is increased to 47.27% after flotation process at particle size 100–74 μm, pulp pH 4, PEA-2000 concentration 1 × 10⁻⁴ mol/L, and pulp concentration 10 g/L. The mechanism of flotation separation of Fe from VTM by PEA-2000 was analyzed by zeta potential test, FT-IR test, and XPS test. PEA is adsorbed on the surface of silicate in VTM by electrostatic adsorption and hydrogen bond adsorption, and the iron phase minerals are mutually repulsive, which realizes the separation of iron. The model of iron separation by flotation of PEA-2000 was established.