Chair of Non-ferrous Metals and Gold, National University of Science and Technology “MISiS”, Moscow, Russia

E. V. Bogatyreva, Assistant Professor, e-mail: Helen_Bogatureva@mail.ru
A. G. Ermilov, Former Collaborator of a Chair

This work demonstrates the possibility of predicting effective mechanical activation conditions for scheelite concentrate from X-ray diffraction data with the aim of accelerating subsequent soda leaching. In this work present XRD data for the unmilled and milled low-grade scheelite concentrate. From the XRD data, we evaluated and the contributions of ΔЕ_d, ΔЕ_s, and ΔЕ_ε to ΔЕ_Σ (where ΔЕ_Σ is the energy stored during MA, ΔЕ_d is the energy spent for changing the interplanar spacings in the crystal lattice, ΔЕ_s is the energy stored in the form of freshly formed crystallite surfaces, and ΔЕ_ε is the energy stored in the form of microstrain). This approach is unique in that it offers the possibility of evaluating the energy stored in the system and, accordingly, predicting the reactivity of materials from XRD data, without chemical or physical characterization, which typically leads to disintegration of the sample and requires significant amounts of activated material. The activation energy change has been shown to be influenced by the type of energy stored. The activation energy change is shown to depend on the type of energy stored during MA. Process tests confirmed the above finding that the degree of extraction depended not on the total stored energy but on the kind of energy. Our results confirm that the energy stored during mechanical activation in the form of surface energy influences the leaching behavior of the concentrate. We have studied the effect of the surface energy stored in the scheelite phase during mechanical activation on the tungsten extraction into solution through low temperature soda leaching. Evaluation of the reactivity of milled scheelite concentrate from XRD data allowed us to optimize MA conditions and reach tungsten extraction into solution at a level of 99%.

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