Effects of Flocculants on Sedimentation of High-mud Copper Oxide Leaching Pulp

In order to solve the problems of high mud content, slow sedimentation and solid liquid separation difficulty of copper oxide leaching pulp, flocculation sedimentation experiments of the pulp were carried out with the pulp concentration at 28.73%, and the effects of type of flocculants, dosage of flocculants, and concentration of flocculants on the sedimentation examined respectively. The results show that alum, sodium dodecyl sulfonate, polyacrylamide, modified anionic polyacrylamide and modified cationic polyacrylamide cannot effectively improve the sedimentation speed. But the modified nonionic polyacrylamide can make the slurry sedimentation speed greatly accelerate, which is due to the adsorption bridging between the functional groups on the molecular chain of modified nonionic polyacrylamide and colloidal particles in the leaching liquid, leading to the particles size increasing gradually in flocculating sedimentation. Modified nonionic polyacrylamide has larger molecular weight, and fluid mechanics size or volume in water, so as to improving its ability for the flocculation, reducing the use of flocculant concentration effectively, and improving the flocculation efficiency. When the concentration of modified nonionic polyacrylamide is 0.1% and the dosage 0.067 g/L, the best sedimentation effect can be achieved.