Manganese-rich phase with low impurity content was prepared with manganese sulfate crude solution by precipitation. A single-factor experiment was carried out to explore effects of reaction time, reaction temperature, pH value and feeding speed of precipitating agent on precipitation efficiency, and then the content of impurity in the finally prepared manganese-rich phase was also analyzed. After the leaching solution with Mn²⁺ in mass concentration of 38 g/L, and pH of 8.0 was precipitated at 60 ℃ for 4 h, with R as precipitating agent fed at a speed of 0.5 L/h, the conversion rate of Mn²⁺ was 94.3%. The ICP and EDS analyses showed that there were low content of impurity ions (K, Na, Ca, Mg) in the precipitate of manganese-rich phase.

Al-Cu-Mg-Ag alloy melt was treated with ultrasonic waves, and the effect of the ultrasonic melt treatment on the microstructure and hardness of alloy was investigated. The results show that compared to the as-cast alloy without ultrasonic treatment, the as-cast alloy after ultrasonic melt treatment for 90 s and 180 s respectively has its hardness correspondingly improved by 12.7% and 11.2%. The ultrasonic melt treatment can reduce the segregation of alloy composition and accelerate precipitation of Ω phase during 2 h aging process at 200 ℃. A quantitative analysis shows that ultrasonic melt treatment can reduce the grain size of as-cast alloy, but presents limited effect of fine grain strengthening. Solid solution strengthening and precipitation strengthening respectively improve the hardness of as-cast and T6-tempered alloys.

An experimental research was carried out on leaching of marine sedimentary manganese deposit from Xinjiang, and effects of acid-to-ore ratio, leaching temperature, leaching time, and ore particle size on manganese leaching rate were investigated. The results indicate that effective separation between elements of silicon and manganese in the solution can be actualized by increasing leaching temperature and prolonging leaching time, which can also benefit the formation of large-particle precipitates and enhancement of filtering speed. After manganese ores with particle size of -150 μm are leached at room temperature for 4 hours, with acid-to-ore ratio of 0.56, the manganese leaching rate can be up to 86.32% and a leaching residue rate is 61.12%, while the mass concentration of manganese ions in the manganese sulfate leachate is 41.29 g/L.

Aiming at uncertainty of beneficiation product zone in dry magnetic separation process, an image segmentation method based on an improved U-Net model was proposed by employing machine vision. In this improved model, convolutional block attention module (CBAM) is utilized to enhance the recognition and attention of the network for target areas, which is beneficial to the segmentation of target objects under complex backgrounds; depth-wise separable convolution is adopted to reduce computational complexity while maintaining accuracy, providing strong support for obtaining high-resolution images of beneficiation product zone. Thus, this model can be applied in magnetic separation and also improve network performance. It is found that this improved model can bring segmentation accuracy up to 92.28%, and also is superior to classic U-Net, DeepLabV3+ and PSPNet models in terms of contour extraction completeness and denoising capabilities.

According to the characteristics of high-content aluminum and low-content lithium in hydrochloric acid leaching solution of a clay-type lithium ore in Hubei Province, lithium and aluminum were firstly separated by adopting calcination at 390 ℃ for 2.0 h. Then, the calcined residue, without grinding, was leached at 90 ℃ for 1 h with water in a volume ratio of 3∶1. After the leaching process, the leaching rate of lithium reached 93.85%, and no aluminum was detected in leaching solution, indicating a good Li-Al separation result. An analysis of chemical composition of calcined residue and leaching residue show that after water leaching, the main metal elements in the calcined residue, such as lithium, kalium, sodium, calcium and magnesium, all are leached into the lixivium, and the main composition of leaching residue are alumina and iron oxide.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) and a pulp regulator, TY-308, were used combinedly for activation in flotation of highly alkali-depressed pyrite, in which AMD was used to neutralize the pulp alkalinity, and TY-308 used to reduce the negative effect of AMD on flotation. A closed-circuit test on flotation with the process consisting of one-stage roughing, one-stage cleaning and one-stage scavenging yielded a pyrite concentrate grading 48.73% S at 97.93% recovery. Compared with the practice using sulfuric acid as the activator, the sulfur recovery can be increased by 1.34 percentage points. Furthermore, not only the cost for AMD treatment will be significantly reduced, but the safety risk associated with the use of concentrated sulfuric acid can be avoided.

Effects of heat treatment system and Cu content on the microstructure and mechanical properties of two conventionally cast Al-Cu-Mn alloys were investigated. It is found that after treatment at proper temperatures, including 525 ℃×16 h+170 ℃×8 h for Cu2.8 alloy, 525 ℃×16 h+170 ℃×14 h for Cu5.7 alloy, the Cu2.8 alloy and Cu5.7 alloy have their tensile strength up to 209.76 MPa and 349.15 MPa respectively, and yield strength reaching 107.15 MPa and 216.21 MPa correspondingly. The detailed exploration of precipitation behavior of the alloy after aging indicates that Cu content brings an important influence to the precipitation behavior. The precipitation of the T phase leads to depletion of Cu atoms in low-Cu alloy during solid solution process. The θ′ phases only adhere near the T phase, and dispersed θ″ phases are only precipitated in the high-Cu alloy, which contribute mainly to higher strength of high-Cu alloy.

Mo (VI) and Cu (II) in aqueous solution were extracted by using an aqueous two-phase system consisting of isodecanol polyoxyethylene ether (E-1006) and ammonium sulfate ((NH₄)₂SO₄) for the first time, and a phase diagram of the system was also obtained. Effects of initial pH of aqueous phase, temperature of system, and concentrations of E-1006 and (NH₄)₂SO₄ on Mo-Cu separation effect were also investigated. The results show that with pH of 2.0, temperature of 313.15 K, and both E-1006 and (NH₄)₂SO₄ at concentration of 150 g/L, the extraction efficiency of Mo (VI) is 96.08% and the separation factor for Mo (VI) and Cu (II) is 5 131.45.

In order to explore the overall stability of slope before and after local failure, as well as the effect of excavation method on slope stability, the slope project on the north side of Jingxi-Barak mining area in Jinchuan of Xinjiang was taken to study local failure characteristics of slope and slope stability under different excavation state by adopting distinct element method. It is found that the distribution of the maximum main stress has a great impact on the slope stability, and the factor of safety for slope stability tends to decrease first and then increase from the stage before local failure to the stage after failure; with more excavated benches, the factor of safety for slope stability tends to increase first and then decrease; with the excavated benches more than 1, the overall factor of safety of the slope meets the requirements; with slope angle less than or equal to 60°, the overall factor of safety also meets the requirements, and the suitable slope angle is 60°.

For a cobalt leaching residue grading 1.31% Cu and 0.20% Co, a flowsheet consisting of grinding and a flotation process of one stage of roughing, one stage of scavenging and two stages of cleaning was proposed based on the occurrence of copper and cobalt therein. A closed-circuit test employing this processing technique can result in a bulk copper-cobalt concentrate grading 16.16% Cu and 2.06% Co with recoveries of 80.56% Cu and 68.29% Co, with the yield of 6.63%. It is concluded that with this approach, copper and cobalt resources in the cobalt leaching residue can be enriched and recovered efficiently.