An experimental study with a vortex magnetic separation (VMS) device

A vortex magnetic separation (VMS) system was designed and applied to the separation of a number of materials. An important feature is that the slurry passageways and the vortex magnetic capture regions are separately arranged in the device. The vortex traps are formed in the vortex magnetic capture regions under certain conditions so that magnetic particles can be driven into the vortex traps from the slurry and captured there. The VMS was used to treat an artificial mixture of wolframite and quartz and some real industrial ores. This paper presents some experimental results obtained. The results showed that the VMS can largely solve the mechanical entrapment problem encountered by the current practice of HGMS. VMS can be run at higher slurry velocities and so produce a higher output. The preliminary experiments carried out on industrial ores showed that this device can treat samples with a wide size range without blockage.