Optimizing Froth Flotation Techniques for Sustainable Beneficiation of Spodumene and Lepidolite in Zimbabwe: Enhancing Lithium Recovery for Battery-Grade Material Production

*
Periodicity:October - December'2024

Abstract

Zimbabwe has the largest known hard rock lithium deposits in Africa, and it is among the top ten worldwide after countries like Chile, Austria, Brazil and Canada. This presents Zimbabwe with a chance to become one of the most viable economies. Challenges are associated with viable exploitation approaches especially at coming up with a high grade concentrate which can be used to produce battery grade lithium cathodes active materials. This paper aims at developing a sustainable route for spodumene beneficiation through optimization of froth flotation. The best opportunity is to focus on the Bikita Minerals lithium deposits as it is well endowed with various types of Lithium. Bikita mine in the southern province of Masvingo holds the world’s largest known lithium deposits mainly in the form of spodumene, petalite, and lepidolite, at around 11m tonnes. Early research reflect that froth flotation is the most reliable and sustainable method to concentrate various lithium ores producing an average grade of around 6% Li2O concentrate from 1% Li2O ores. Anionic collectors such as oleic acid produce the best grades as compared with other types of collectors. Due to its complex structure, lepidolite requires more reagents as compared to spodumene leading to high operational expenses in lepidolite flotation. Studies have also proven that to produce battery grade Lithium Carbonate on an economical scale at least a grade of 5.5% Li2O is required. Factors affecting the final grade of the concentrate were also investigated in the research and a conclusion was drawn. The results obtained from experimental work showed that Froth Flotation is by far the most sustainable method for lithium beneficiation method with high recovery rates often exceeding 90%. However further processing can also be done to recover other minerals such as aluminium and phosphorus which are present in both lepidolite and spodumene in higher amounts.

Keywords

Lithium, Spodumene, Lepidolite, Flotation, Anionic collector, Zimbabwe

How to Cite this Article?

References

If you have access to this article please login to view the article or kindly login to purchase the article

Purchase Instant Access

Single Article

North Americas,UK,
Middle East,Europe
India Rest of world
USD EUR INR USD-ROW
Pdf 35 35 200 20
Online 15 15 200 15
Pdf & Online 35 35 400 25

Options for accessing this content:
  • If you would like institutional access to this content, please recommend the title to your librarian.
    Library Recommendation Form
  • If you already have i-manager's user account: Login above and proceed to purchase the article.
  • New Users: Please register, then proceed to purchase the article.