The effect of ore blends on the mineral processing of platinum ores

This paper investigates whether blends of platinum ores display linear grinding and flotation characteristics or whether non-linear effects occur, i.e. synergistic/antagonistic effects. Ores from four different shafts are used in the study, i.e. Salene, Waterval UG2, Paardekraal and Townlands. Laboratory grinding and flotation tests are conducted on blends of the four ores using a statistical simplex lattice mixture design. Grinding results show no evidence that blends of ores display non-linear grinding characteristics. Flotation results show significant antagonistic effects in binary blends of the Salene ore with the other ore types. On the other hand, ternary/quaternary blends of ores result in synergistic effects. The study concludes that blends of platinum ores display non-linear (non-additive) characteristics when there are large differences in metallurgical properties between the ore types. The study demonstrates that appropriately designed mixtures experiments are an effective way to study the performance of ore blends in the laboratory.