Application of Taguchi optimization on the titanium recovery from iron sands using flotation process

Abstract

Titanium is very important metal which commonly used in industrial process, automotive, electronic devices and other application. Titanium is not pure element in nature but mixed with other elements such as in irons sands. Hence, it is required to do research to gain high concentration titanium and also eliminate its impurities. One of method which able to overcome this problem is the flotation method. On this research, titanium recovery process is done from natural iron sands of Lampung using oleic acid as a collector in the flotation process. The iron sands which used for each variation are 10, 15 and 20 wt% with a size of 60, 100 and 150 mesh. Those iron sands were mixed into 0,10; 0,20; 0,30 lb/tons of collector by varying pH condition of 6, 8 and 10. After that, each variation product was characterized by XRF characterization and then calculated based on Taguchi method. From the research that had been done, it is known that the optimum values are at the content: oleic acid = 0,1 lbs/ton, ore 20 wt%, pH 8, the Particle size of 150 mesh.