Abstract
Iron and steel play very important role in the economy of any nation because it is the yardstick for determining the rate of industrialisation of the countries. The present work studied the economic liberation and mineralogical characteristics of Nigerian low grade iron ore for effective processing. The ore studied was sourced from Itakpe an iron ore deposit in Nigeria. The sample was crushed sieved and characterized to understand the economic liberation and mineralogical characterization. Sieve analysis carried out based on the 2 method to choose 2300, 1700, 1180, 850, 600, 425, 300, 212, 150, 106, 75, and 63 μm sieves. Thereafter, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Xray diffraction was carried out to study the mineralogical characteristics of the sample. The results obtained shows that the economic liberation of Itakpe is between -425 and +300 μm. The sample identity by SEM and XRD shows that the ore majorly contains hematite, magnetite and silica. It was therefore suggested that the ore can be concentrated by a combination of gravity separation method (jigging hydroclassifying or using the wifely shaking table) and magnetic separation to process the ore. Thereafter, more studies can investigation can be carried out to determine optimum parameters for flotation at lower particle sizes.