Let’s prepare fluor-spar!

First of all, a truck brings us some ore; don't forget the miners' job behind it! But we'll talk about it soon. So, this ore is composed of big stones; put these big stones into a breaker and smaller stones will come out!

Then, mix it with some water and send it to a ball mill. Did I hear someone asking “what is it?”? A ball mill is a big cylinder where we put some steel balls inside. It will turn and, as the heavy stones will fall over our small stones, it will triturate them until they become a powder. Isn’t it magic? Then take a look on it:

Currently we have some small fluor-spar particles mixed with some small gangue particles. But I don't want to take the fluor-spar grains one by one. Let's use an intelligent technique to separate it...

Let's then do what we call flotation! Flotation is the method used to separate a heavy material from a light material. But that’s our case! We have the flour-spar mixed with the gangue. The gangue is lighter than the fluor-spar. Sure, meanwhile will need some magic ingredients to facilitate this process. Firstly, something to create some foam; to help the gangue to float, we will put a flocculating agent. The gangue will climb, following the bubbles and will come out in the upper part of our machine. Our fluor-spar comes out in the under part!

Now it’s almost done. Our wet fluor-spar will be dried firs tin a filter drum (oh no, it’s not doing some noise, it’s maybe the most quite equipment we have!). It’s also a cylinder that will be involved with our moisture. From inside we drain the water and we obtain a powder that is almost dried. A little passage by the furnace and EUREKA! We have our dried fluor-spar that can be stocked and some big vertical cylinders! It will fill some big bags or some small packages, as the client wish! And will be ready to travel to its destination!

Ah, but this is not the very end! We need also to dry our gangue in a filter press; it means simply pressing it like a sponge. The dried gangue will be transported to its origin’s place, covered with some earth, seeds and so soon we have new green mountain!

And the water!? We’ll send all the used water to a station, where we’ll treat it with care to separate it from the mud. And then, we’ll use it again to do prepare our moisture to the ball mill step!

Isn’t it easy? You just need to follow the preparation schema. If you have some doubts about “how to prepare fluor-spar”, do not hesitate! I got high quality information with Claude, technical director, and René Jean, the plant responsable. But don’t try it at home ok?!