Dewatering Screens for Processing Minerals

Mineral processing embodies a lot of important steps to ensure that mineral products are separated from waste rock and other unnecessary elements. One step that is involved in processing mineral products is dewatering. Dewatering is the process of removing water contained in and with the mineral particles.

Importance of Dewatering

Dewatering is believed to be one of the most important steps in mineral processing. As mentioned, dewatering removes water that is absorbed by the particles. The removal of water can decrease the density of the pulp, removing unnecessary water weight from the minerals. This process also enables ore handling, easy transportation of concentrates, and disposal of the gangue.

As the dewatering goes on, the water extracted from the ore is being recirculated to plants after being treated on a water plant.

Facts about Dewatering Screens

One tool that is frequently used in the dewatering process is dewatering screens. Once only popular in the coal industry, dewatering screens have now crossed different industries with the purpose of separating water or liquids from minerals, soil, sand, plastic granules, and other solid elements.

Dewatering screens can dewater particles of sand, coal, iron ore, salt, and other similarly sized particles. This screen can also dewater fines in fines recovery circuits, rinse and dewater jig discharge, and rinse aggregates before loadout, desliming, and trash or organics dewatering or screening.

Dewatering Minerals

The operation of dewatering screens is fairly simple. The involved slurry, which is primarily composed of minerals, gangue, and liquid, will be passed and fed onto a steep, downward inclined screen surface at the feed end for rapid drainage. The apertures located on the screen allow the liquid to pass through while keeping the solid minerals intact over the screen.

The rapid drainage process initiates the formation of a water pool in the valley and material build-up on the screen surface. Vibratory motors would then create an abrupt linear motion at a certain angle so that the solid particles will move upward and forward on the screen surface. The liquid element, on the other hand, will move continuously on the openings of the surface so that droplets will form and later on pass through the screen media.

As the vibratory action continues, a deep bed of solid materials will be created on the uphill slope of the screen. This deep bed allows the retention of much finer materials than the openings of the screen. Even with this solid formation, the water will still be separated from the solid materials.

Benefits of Dewatering Screens

The use of dewatering screens for minerals can provide some notable benefits. You can expect to obtain drier material than ever before. The inclusion of additional dewatering components can help you remove significant moisture content on your material. Moreover, dewatering screens can handle a wide range of particle sizes. Certain types of screens can now be configured depending on your preferred particle size. Another benefit of dewatering screens is you can immediately remove fines from your minerals. By installing spray water, the additional water can easily remove unwanted fines and bring them past the screen media.

Separating liquid and other elements from the minerals is now easier with the use of dewatering screens. For more information about dewatering screens, you can always contact us at Hawk Machinery.

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