AISTech 2019 — Proceedings of the Iron & Steel Technology Conference

6–9 May 2019, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA

DOI 10.1000.377.073

CFD Simulation of Dry Density Separation of Iron Ore Fines

Anand Senguttuvan1,2, Ganesh Chalavadi3, Ranjeet Singh3, Achintya Das1,2

1
M. N. Dastur & Co. (P) Ltd.
P-17 Mission Row Extension
Kolkata 700013, India
2
Dastur Innovation Labs
250 Yonge Street, Suite 2201
Toronto, ON M5B 2L7, Canada
Phone: +(1) - 647-6-DASTUR, +(1) - 647-632-7887
Email: Anand.S@dastur.com
3
Mineral Processing Division,
CSIR-National Metallurgical laboratory,
Jamshedpur 831007, India

INTRODUCTION
During the iron ore processing stages of crushing, washing, screening and classification, the lateritic material, rich in alumina
and silica, gets accumulated with the ore fines (-10 mm). Therefore, where high grade ore is available, the fines are usually
discarded as waste leading to huge iron loss and the problem of dumping. In medium and low grade ores these fines are used
in agglomeration that increases the cost of ironmaking due to the alumina content [1]. Therefore iron ore beneficiation in the
fines range calls for new processes. In this regard, a novel method was devised at CSIR-NML in collaboration with M N
Dastur & Co along the lines of dry ore processing. Although limited, the past work shows that magnetic separation methods
are selective and have low throughput [2-4]; whereas the studies on fluidized bed separators show that they are potentially
scalable to high throughput [5-9]. In the light of these, a shallow bed of iron ore fines subjected elutriation to separate particles
based on density and size, was considered.

Figure 1. Schematic of bench-scale model of dry ore beneficiation

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 701

The hematite-rich and gangue particles have significant density differences and that can be clearly separated by density based
separation methods. However, the particle size variation results in overlapping regimes of factors that cause the particle
separation. Therefore the goal is to optimize the separating factors to maximize the yield. As a proof of concept, a bench-
scale model for dry ore beneficiation was constructed at CSIR-NML, as shown schematically in Figure 1. The model consists
of an inclined vibrating deck with a mesh plate (100 mesh) on which ore fines are fed at the upper end and as these particles
descend down the slope, are subjected to an air blast issuing from beneath the mesh plate; the particles depending on their
size and density are thrown up in the air and as they fall, are collected in a tray called collector. The collected particles are
analyzed for their iron content. The particle collection behavior is governed by the particle trajectories that is affected by jet
air velocity and mesh plate inclination according to the particle size and density. Therefore to visualize and characterize the
complex phenomena, the ore separation process is numerically simulated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the
present work. The particle inlet condition that is central to simulation of any such fluidization processes is treated rigorously.
However, the feeding of ore particles on the mesh plate and their movement due to vibration are not simulated to avoid
associated complexities. Therefore, the scope of the present work is only to assess the particle separation behavior without
any inter-particle interaction.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL
The CFD simulations consist of two major steps:
1. Steady state simulations of air flow from mesh plate and
2. Lagrangian particle tracking simulations of ore particle trajectories
All simulations were carried out using open source softwares namely, SALOME platform[10] (ver. 8.3.0) for geometry
construction, meshing and post-processing and Code_Saturne[11] (ver. 5.07) for solving the CFD equations.

Figure 2. Simulation domain marked with boundary conditions (left) and the corresponding meshing schemes and dimensions
(right). The length (x-direction) and half width (z-direction) of inlet are 0.6 and 0.05 m, respectively.

Steady State Air Flow Simulations

The simulation domain should be as tall and wide as to capture all the particles trajectories. Since the trajectories were found
to vary mostly in the x and y directions, a smaller length in the z direction was considered; moreover due to symmetry only
half of the domain was considered in the z direction. For stability of the air jet, an extra domain in the x direction before the
mesh plate was considered. Therefore the total length of the domain in the x, y and z directions are approximately 3.5 m, 4.0
m and 0.5 m, respectively (see Figure 2). The length and half-width of the mesh plate are 0.6 and 0.05 m, respectively. The
domain is bounded by the following, as marked in Figure 2:

702 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 1. inlet for air inflow from mesh plate into the domain and also for the particles
2. symmetry at the mid of the plate width in the z direction
3. wall in all the basal regions of the domain
4. outflow in the rest of the regions
Treatment of all but the inlet was simply through standard boundary conditions. For the inlet, the profile of air velocity
normal to the inlet surface was set to vary linearly in the x direction, from 0 at the upper end of the mesh plate to maximum at
the lower end (see Figure 6b, h/Lch = 0), while it was constant in the z direction; two maximum velocities namely, 3.0 and
4.0 m/s were considered; three porous plate inclinations namely, 8, 13 and 18 degrees with respect to x-axis were considered.
Figure 2 also shows the meshing scheme employed with the conventional idea that a fine mesh applied at the region of larger
change in transport quantities. The mesh was constructed by partitioning the domain into four parts and meshing each of
them with fully structured meshes, resulting in a total of 53,000 hexahedral elements.
The Navier-Stokes equations were solved using the default Code_Saturne parameters (Ver. 5.0.7 manual[11] ). Turbulence was
simulated using the SST model and without spending extra effort on wall treatment as they have insignificant role in the
present work. The steady state air flow simulations were performed until the monitored velocity profiles did not change
significantly. The resulting steady state velocity and turbulence fields for each case were used for their respective particle
tracking simulations.

Lagrangian Particle Tracking Simulations

Statistically large number of particles was tracked considering only the balance between fluid drag and gravitational forces on
the particles and without any inter-particle interaction. The velocity and turbulence fields obtained from the steady state
simulations were used to compute the fluid drag on the particles. The drag coefficient was obtained from the correlations of
Bagheri and Bonodonna[12], simply assuming that all particles are tetrahedral, although they are irregular polyhedra.
Extensive measurements show[12] that the drag coefficient for tetrahedral particles can be as high as twice that of a sphere at
high Reynolds numbers. The stochastic nature of the particle motion due to fluid turbulence is simulated using the in-built
turbulence dispersion scheme of Code_Saturne. Since the particle feeding and movement on the mesh plate were not
simulated, as mentioned earlier, the feed rate was fixed at 100 particles per time step; for each time step these particles were
distributed randomly throughout the inlet area with uniform probability.

The steps described hitherto are typical of any particle tracking simulation. But the major challenge is providing the most
realistic particle inlet condition by incorporating the variation in both the particle size and density. The size distribution of
iron ore fines considered in this work is shown in Figure 3a. The density variation is because, the iron ore fines are a mixture
of free hematite and hematite locked with gangue materials consisting of silica, alumina and other minor constituents, in
various degrees. The liberation ratio of Eastern Indian iron ores can be typically described by (as also shown in Figure 3b)[13],

. (1)
𝑋 1.754 𝑥, 𝜇𝑚

where, 𝑋 is the mass fraction of free hematite in the ore, which is essentially a function of particle size, x; finer the size,
more liberated is the hematite content. The composition and the density values of the iron ore considered for this work are
given in Table 1, characteristic of a medium grade ore.

Figure 3. a) Input particle size distribution b) Liberation characteristics of Eastern Indian iron ore[13]

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 703

 Table 1. Ore constituents and their densities considered for the simulations

Component Mass % Density, kg/m3

Fe2O3 90 5300
Al2O3 2.5 3900
SiO2 3.5 2700
Loss on ignition 4 1000

Based on Eq. (1) the density of particles for a given size, x, can be described as,

𝜌 𝑋 𝑋 𝑥
𝜌 𝑥 (2)
𝜌 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒

where, 𝜌 is the density of pure hematite and 𝜌 is the density of locked particles estimated from the rule of mixtures,

1
𝜌 , 𝑗 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑒 (3)
∑ 𝑋 /𝜌

wherein, 𝑋 is the mass fraction of jth component of ore including locked hematite, silica, alumina and loss-on-ignition
matter. The mass balance is,

𝑋 𝑋 1 (4)

Thus, using Eqs. (1) to (4) the density profile as function of ore composition and particle size can be described.
Now to feed the particles on the mesh plate randomly as initial condition, the following are set as random variables:
• particle size, x, sampled from size distribution (Figure 3a) and
• the liberation ratio, 𝑋 , for random sampling of particle density through Eq. (2)
For random sampling from a given distribution, a popular technique known as the inverse transform sampling (ITS) is
employed, whose philosophy is outlined in the following steps:
1. Let 𝑓 𝑥 be the given continuous probability density function so that 𝑓 𝑥 1
2. Obtain the cumulative density function 𝐹 𝑥 𝑓 𝑥
3. Set 𝐹 𝑥 𝑈𝑅𝑁 , where, 0 𝑈𝑅𝑁 1 is the uniform random number
4. Obtain 𝑥 𝐹 𝑈𝑅𝑁 , which is the desired random sample; the inversion step often requires the Newton-Raphson
method.
The application of ITS technique is successful when a histogram plotted from a very large number of samples matches with
the input distribution. However, the particle size distribution obtained from most of the experimental measurements poses the
following challenges:
1. the distribution is discrete
2. the size class intervals are unequal
3. the frequency is mass based and not number based
The methods of overcoming these challenges are addressed in the following.
1. ITS requires a continuous probability distribution function (PDF) whereas the input distribution is discrete.
Therefore the discrete PDF has to be curve fitted to extract a continuous PDF.
2. Direct curve fitting is erroneous because, the normalized integral sum of frequencies of the discrete and continuous
PDFs will not match due to the unequal class intervals. Therefore, first the frequency of each class was divided by
the width of the class interval and then re-normalized. The resulting equalized discrete PDF, as shown in Figure 4a,
is more stepped, whereas, most of the distributions are continuous because of the underlying physical phenomena of
the real world processes. To transform the stepped PDF into a continuous PDF the following steps were executed
iteratively until convergence:
o three-point averaging: for each size class, take the average of frequency values of itself and its front and
back neighbors; this step distorts the integral sum of frequencies, which is corrected in the next step.

704 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 o correction: for each size class subtract the excess value, in proportion to the distortion introduced in the
averaging step.
The resulting transformed PDF, shown in Figure 4b, is continuous and more realistic.

Figure 4. (a) Equalized class intervals of input distribution (b) stepped distribution in (a) transformed into a more continuous
distribution based on the premise that most of the real world phenomena yield continuous distributions
• In the particle tracking simulation, the discrete feeding of particles requires the frequency to be number based
whereas the given data is mass% based; so a conversion is necessary. For each size class, i, the number of particles
is the sum of free hematite and locked particles; their respective numbers are given by,

𝑋 𝑋 𝑚
𝑛 (5)
𝜌 𝑉 𝑥
and
1 𝑋 𝑋 𝑚
𝑛 (6)
𝜌 𝑉 𝑥

where, 𝑚 is the mass of particles of the ith size class and 𝑉 𝑥 is the volume of a particle of size 𝑥 . It is apparent that
separate sampling of both the free and locked particles is required through Eqs. (5) and (6). However, the rule of mixtures
applied for ore density, 𝜌 (similar to Eq. (3)), simplifies the problem to sampling only for the total number of particles in
each size class through,

𝑚
𝑛 𝑛 𝑛 (7)
𝜌 𝑉 𝑥

If the particle size is represented by the equivalent volume diameter (d) of sphere, then the normalized number of particles of
each size class is given by,

𝑛 𝑚
𝑓 (8)
∑𝑛 𝑑

using which, the transformed number based frequency distribution is obtained as shown in Figure 5a. This is now suitable for
curve-fitting to obtain a continuous PDF suitable for ITS. However, often, the distributions are too complex to be fitted by
one single curve. Therefore, as ITS permits, the distribution is approximated by piecewise linear equations and subjected to
the ITS procedure to generate the particle size samples.
As already mentioned, the density has to be assigned randomly conforming to the ore liberation ratio. For convenience, Eq.
(7) has combined the sampling of particle sizes for both free and locked particles; now these samples can be resolved among
the free and locked particles by setting,

𝑋 𝑈𝑅𝑁 (9)

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 705

in Eq. (2), where, 0 𝑈𝑅𝑁 1 is the uniform random number. Thus 𝜌 𝑥 is sampled randomly, through Eq. (2) and also
due to random sampling of x.
The steps laid out hitherto to generate any number of random samples from any given discrete PDF of mass% ~ size
distribution were coded in C programming language. For 100,000 samples of particle size and density, the computed mass%
~ size distribution is compared with the input distribution in Figure 5b; it shows the sampling procedure thus developed is
able to well reproduce the input distribution. These samples were read by the Lagrangian particle tracking module of
Code_Saturne and applied as particle inlet condition in the simulation as 100 samples per time step.

Figure 5. (a) Number frequency distribution obtained from mass% ~ size distribution using Eq. (8) (b) mass% ~ size
distribution obtained from 100,000 samples of particle size and density

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Particle Trajectories
The particle trajectories are influenced by their size and density and the velocity field due to the air jet. The air flow
characteristics, also found to be typical of any other case, are detailed in Figure 6; the jet profile transforms from a right
angle-triangle at the inlet mesh plate to a Gaussian profile at a farther distance.

Figure 6. Air flow profile characteristics for the case of 4 m/s of maximum inlet velocity and 8° inclination of mesh plate,
extracted at the symmetry plane (z = 0) (a) Scalar map of velocity magnitude (legend in m/s) (b) velocity magnitude (U)
normalized by the maximum inlet velocity (Uch = 4 m/s) versus transverse distance (X) normalized by the distance at which U
= 0.1Uch [X10], for various distances from the mesh plate surface (h) normalized by the mesh plate length (Lch) (c) Velocity
vector map excluding the jet region; length of the largest vector is 0.1 m/s.

706 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

The trajectories of 20 pure hematite particles of three sizes and two mesh plate inclinations are shown in Figure 7 and the
collective trajectories of particles of the entire size and density ranges are shown in Figure 8. The following characteristics
are observable:
• The jet intensity decreases with the vertical distance and therefore, larger particles are lifted to shorter heights before
they fall on the collector plate.
• The lift off of larger particles is delayed towards the lower end of the mesh plate where the inlet velocity becomes
stronger.
• With increasing mesh plate inclination, the particles are more diverted away from the influence of air jet field that
they are lifted to a shorter height but dispersed more in the x direction. This is more evident in Figure 8.
• Counter-intuitively, the descending finer particles land closer to the mesh plate edge of the collector. This is due to
the drag exerted by the lateral velocity field associated with the jet entrainment, clearly evident in Figure 6c.

Figure 7. Trajectories of twenty hematite particles (5300 kg/m3) for three sizes and two mesh plate inclinations (8° and 18°).

Figure 8. Particle trajectories of all sizes and densities for two mesh plate inclinations against the backdrop of velocity
magnitude map in grayscale.

Particle Collection Characteristics

To achieve high throughput rates the ore beneficiation process should be continuous. If the collector is a conveyor belt,
ideally, the particles should collect in separate bands of ore concentrate (high density) and gangue (low density) particles

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 707

either in the longitudinal or the transverse direction so that a divider can easily separate them as shown schematically in
Figure 9. With this desired quality as reference the particle collection characteristics are assessed in the following.

Figure 9. Schematic of an ideal separation behavior where particles are collected on a conveyor belt in separate bands that
can facilitate their easier separation by a divider
Particles collected in the collector area for the case of 4 m/s of maximum inlet velocity and three mesh plate inclinations,
shown in Figure 10, exhibit the following characteristics:
• With the increase in mesh plate inclination, the spreading of particles decreases in transverse direction (z) and
increases in the longitudinal direction (x).
• A thick crescent due to large deposition of particles is seen in all cases surrounded by sparse deposition of particles
in left, right and top directions with respect to those figures.
• To the top of the crescent, a clear separation of fine low density particles (of gangue) is clearly visible unlike the rest
of the regions
These characteristics were essentially similar in the case of 3 m/s of maximum inlet velocity, except for the reduced scale of
dispersion, as can be seen in one instance of comparison shown in Figure 11; also observed in the figure that large particle of
all densities have practically no transverse (z) dispersion.
For quantitative assessment, the collector area was divided into 5 bins across the transverse (z) direction and 10 bins in the
longitudinal (x) direction as shown in Figure 12. The average density and mass fraction of particles collected in each of the
bins are plotted for various cases in the charts in Figure 13. It is seen that binning of particles in the transverse direction
shows a rather clear demarcation between zones of concentrate and gangue particles and therefore preferred over the binning
in the longitudinal direction. For the present ore composition (Table 1), an average density of 5000 kg/m3 in a bin means the
ore is free from 40% of total gangue mass which also means an Fe enrichment from 63% in the ore to 66%; setting this as the
cut-off density, the total yield from zones above the cut-off density is tabulated in Table 2 for the cases of transverse binning.
It is seen that the highest yield is obtained at the largest velocity and smallest inclination; the inclination cannot be altogether
eliminated as it aids in ore particle feeding and movement; too larger velocity may complicate the process control. In this
case, the transverse binning allows for making the process continuous if a conveyor belt collecting the particles is moving in
the longitudinal direction, according to the scheme in Figure 9.
The existence of Fe enriched zones and high yield in the simulation results demonstrate favourable ore separation
characteristics. The process can be enhanced through the following considerations:
• The ore can be further concentrated through multiple stages of processing.
• The jet velocity profile can be manipulated as against the linear velocity profile considered in the present work.
• By placing interceptors in the trajectories of the descending particles at certain locations, particles can be selectively
removed. For example, as in Figure 8, the low density fine particles can be intercepted at around y = 2.5 m and y =
2.0 m for the cases of 8° and 18°, respectively.
• The ore separator can be scaled up in the transverse and/or the longitudinal directions to scale up the throughput
rate.
After assessing and incorporating these enhancements the process economics need to be assessed with respect to the
treatment of rejected ore fines of high grade ores and beneficiation of low grade ores. These considerations serve as the scope
for future work.

708 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

Figure 10. Particles in the collector area for the case of 4 m/s of maximum inlet velocity and three mesh plate inclinations.
Arrow shows the direction of particle ejection.

Figure 11. Particles in the collector area with magnified particle size show that large particles of all densities lack transverse
dispersion. Arrow shows the direction of particle ejection.

Figure 12. Scheme of dividing the collector area into 5 and 10 zones (bins) in the z and x directions, respectively

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 709

Figure 13. Plots of average density and percentage mass of particles collected in the bins along transverse (z) and longitudinal
(x) directions along in the collector. All charts share common ordinate axes within each row.

Table 2. Yield of concentrate free from 40% of total gangue mass obtained due to transverse binning
8° 13° 18°
4 m/s 94.7 68.3 0
3 m/s 67.4 71.1 0

CONCLUSION
CFD simulations of a novel dry ore beneficiation process were carried out for varying air jet velocity and mesh plate
inclinations of the separator and for a typical Eastern Indian iron ore characteristics. The particle inlet conditions were
derived rigorously based on the commonly available information namely, the mass based size distribution and the liberation
ratio of the ore particles. The particles thus ejected displayed various patterns of dispersion and settling that were visualized
and quantitatively assessed from the simulation results. The results demonstrate a substantial separation of ore particles upon
dividing the collector region in the transverse direction; particularly, a combination of high jet velocity and low mesh plate
inclination resulted in a high yield of 94.7% with a significant Fe enrichment from 63% to 66%; this also means a 1% drop in
alumina, for the present ore composition, that leads to reduced coke and flux rates and ironmaking cost or upgrading the
rejected ore fines. The ore can be further beneficiated by recycling the concentrate through multiple processing steps.
Multiple process enhancements have been identified, after incorporating which, the beneficiation process has to be
economically assessed for beneficiation of low grade ores as well as rejected high grade ore fines.

710 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

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© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 711