A Laboratory Study to Simulate Ore Sorting for a Rare Earth Ore

Ore sorting is an emerging technology in mineral processing that can produce a significant impact on the total mining and processing economics. The technology is capable of pre-concentrating an ore based on differences in the mineralogical characteristics which can include color, brightness, transparency, size, shape, density, or near-infrared response. The current practice of conducting an ore sorting test typically requires large amounts of materials to be sent to a commercial testing facility which is expensive and time consuming. Here, we present a novel method to simulate commercial ore sorting at laboratory scale using a rare earth ore. The work also shows how to use the experimental findings to assess the grade and recovery and separation efficiency as a result of the sorting operated under different cut-off densities. Though the current work was based on a rare earth ore, we envision the experiment method, and data analysis can be extended to other types of ores, offering more accessibility to operations who are interested in ore sorting technologies.