Dewatering of barite clay wastewater by inorganic coagulants and co-polymer flocculants

Abstract

This work is focused on dewatering of barite-containing clay waste from a barite beneficiation plant by coagulation and flocculation to enhance the dewatering rate and recycling of process water. A flocculation performance of co-polymers (Superfloc A-130 and A-100) was compared with coagulants (Al2SO4 18H2O, CaCl2 and FeCl3 6H2O). The best results were obtained with an anionic co-polymer, i.e. Superfloc A-130. The settling rate increased 635-fold in the case of using anionic co-polymer Superfloc A-130 in comparison with the natural settling rate of the same wastewater. In laboratory tests, an optimum thickener design was developed for the barite clay wastewater. In this paper, sedimentation studies on the barite clay wastes are presented for the first time, both as the laboratory studies and industrial applications.