Abstract:Due to the high oxidation rate of copper-cobalt ore in SICOMINES in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), there are some copper-bearing minerals that are difficult to select, resulting in poor separation indicators. In order to recover the useful copper-containing minerals in the flotation tailings, through the analysis of the ore properties of the flotation tailings, according to the characteristics of the ore properties, the flotation tailings were subjected to gravity separation, magnetic separation, flotation and a combination of various separation methods of re-separation experimental research, and finally determined that the flotation tailings adopts a coarse and a sweep strong magnetic separation, the magnetic separation concentrate is flotated with a coarse sweep, and the flotation tailings of the magnetic separation concentrate are separated by a section of strong magnetic separation, so as to effectively recover the refractory copper-containing minerals in the flotation tailings. Compared with the original flotation process, the recovery rates of total copper and total cobalt reached 84.74% and 56.88%, an increase of 8.95 and 8.28 percentage points. At the same time, the magnetic separation concentrate of flotation tailings and magnetic separation is re-separated, which greatly reduces the leaching acid consumption of magnetic separation concentrate.