Iron Ore Tailings Dewatering: Measurement of Adhesion and Cohesion for Filter Press Operation

Globally, mining operators focus increasingly on tailings filtration to recover process water and store tailings more safely. Generally, required water contents below 20-w% are reached by using filter presses. To maintain high efficiency, complete cake detachment is needed because incomplete discharge reduces plant performance. However, filter cake discharge can occur in different ways, mainly influenced by adhesion of the filter cake to the filter cloth as well as by cohesion of the cake. Therefore, this study points out different major detachment behaviors and a theoretical approach to describe them. Furthermore, investigations on iron ore tailings filtrations were carried out to show the influences of different filter media, different filtration pressure and cake post-treatment on adhesion and cohesion.