Commonly used barite forms include fluorite-barite veins and quartz-barite veins, often found as associated with sphalerite, chalcopyrite, and galena. Barite can be processed by crushing, washing, and whitening the raw ore to obtain high-whiteness fine and ultrafine powders, which can be used to produce white pigments. It can also be used as a filler in chemical, papermaking, and textile industries. In glass production, it acts as a flux and increases the brightness of the glass.

Barite Beneficiation Process Flow

Barite is typically beneficiated using three processes: gravity separation, magnetic separation, and flotation. This article focuses on the gravity separation process for barite. For information on other processes and equipment configurations, please click on the online consultation to contact us!

Process Flow and Required Equipment:

The raw barite ore is first fed steadily and evenly into the crusher via a hopper and feeder. After crushing, the barite ore enters a jig for gravity separation. In the alternating water flow generated by the jig’s agitation, the ore stratifies according to density. Due to its higher specific gravity, barite occupies the lower space of the separation tank during stratification, while gangue, with its lower specific gravity, occupies the upper space. A special separating device discharges the two materials with different specific gravities separately, resulting in barite concentrate and tailings.

1. Crushing Process

Barite is brittle and easily broken. The crushing process typically uses a jaw crusher. A two-stage crushing process is designed to crush large pieces of barite, ensuring the output particle size is within the effective feed size range of the jig.

Crushing Equipment: Jaw Crusher + Fine Jaw Crusher/Cone Crusher

2. Screening

After crushing, barite ore contains both coarse and fine aggregates. Since mineral processing equipment typically has specific requirements for feed particle size and range, barite ore needs to be screened to achieve better beneficiation indicators and higher throughput.

Screening Equipment: Circular Vibrating Screen

3. Separation

Separation is the core of the gravity separation process. Gravity separation equipment performs gravity separation operations on the barite ore.

Separation Equipment: Jig

4. Dewatering

The concentrate and tailings discharged after gravity separation by the jig contain a significant amount of moisture. Dewatering measures are necessary to reduce the moisture content of the concentrate and to recover excess water for recycling, thus reducing water consumption.