Abstract Rare earth element (REE)-bearing carbonatite deposits commonly contain a wide range of different REE- and REE-bearing minerals associated with various gangue matrices. In order to select the most-suitable mineral processing technique for these deposits, it is essential to identify and quantify the minerals of interest, including their liberation, associations and grain size distribution, along with whole rock compositions. These data are also vital for ore feed optimisation and metallurgical troubleshooting during and after designing a mineral processing flowsheet. This paper summarises the key mineralogical parameters needed before conducting metallurgical beneficiation tests, using the Songwe Hill carbonatite deposit as an example. This REE ore deposit consists of poorly-liberated synchysite-(Ce), which hosts the light rare earth elements including Nd plus some heavy rare earths and well-liberated apatite, which hosts 50% of Gd, 63% of Dy and 71% of Y (heavy rare earth elements) in the deposit. For all REE heavier than Gd, apatite is the most important REE host, however, for the two REE where data are available in both synchysite-(Ce) and apatite (Dy and Y), synchysite-(Ce) still accommodates >25% of the whole-rock HREE content. Both of these ore minerals are associated with ankerite, calcite, and to a lesser extent with iron oxides/carbonates, K-feldspar, strontianite and baryte. According to the quantitative mineralogical data, the possibility of using gravity separation, magnetic separation, froth flotation and leaching to process Songwe Hill carbonatite ore is discussed and a potential beneficiation flowsheet is presented.

中文翻译：

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含稀土氟碳酸盐碳酸岩矿床的关键工艺矿物学参数：以马拉维 Songwe Hill 为例

摘要 含稀土元素 (REE) 的碳酸岩矿床通常包含与各种脉石基质相关的各种不同的含 REE 和 REE 矿物。为了为这些矿床选择最合适的矿物加工技术，必须识别和量化感兴趣的矿物，包括它们的释放、组合和粒度分布，以及整个岩石成分。这些数据对于设计矿物加工流程期间和之后的矿石进料优化和冶金故障排除也至关重要。本文以松威山碳酸岩矿床为例，总结了进行冶金选矿试验前所需的关键矿物学参数。该 REE 矿床由未充分释放的同步矿 (Ce)、矿床中含有包括 Nd 在内的轻稀土元素以及一些重稀土和游离磷灰石，其中含有 50% 的 Gd、63% 的 Dy 和 71% 的 Y（重稀土元素）。对于所有比 Gd 重的 REE，磷灰石是最重要的 REE 宿主，然而，对于同步石-(Ce) 和磷灰石 (Dy 和 Y) 数据都可用的两种 REE，同步石-(Ce) 仍然容纳 >25%全岩 HREE 含量。这两种矿石矿物都与铁橄榄石、方解石有关，并在较小程度上与铁氧化物/碳酸盐、钾长石、菱锰矿和重晶石有关。根据定量矿物学数据，讨论了使用重选、磁选、泡沫浮选和浸出处理松威山碳酸岩矿石的可能性，并提出了潜在的选矿流程。