Flotation recovery of fluorite from rare earth operation taillings

There are rich rare earth (Bastnaesite) deposits located in Sichuan, western China, where the distinct feature compared with other rare earth deposits is of coexistence by fluorite, with no less valuable than rare earth, which attracted less attention with a result of fluorite losing in rare earth tailings. Aiming at giving beneficiation evaluations on recovery of fluorite from rare earth operation tailings, experiments were conducted in bench scale and satisfied results were gained. The experiments results indicated a fluorite concentration with CaF₂ of 95.78%, as well as recovery of 64.34% for CaF₂, was obtained from the tailings (average CaF₂ grade of 25.65%) by an innovative flotation technique.