The recent developments of steel and iron industries generated a huge consumption of iron ores which has attracted much attention for utilizing low-grade iron resources to satisfy this increasing demand. The present study focuses on the characterization and enrichment of the low-grade iron ores from Rouina deposit-Ain Defla-. Currently, the ore is used in the cement industry because it is considered a low-grade iron ore. After the sampling process, a physico-chemical and mineralogical characterization was carried out and the results revealed that the sample consists of hematite, limonite and goethite as major opaque oxide minerals whereas silicates as well as clays form the gangue minerals in the sample. The average grade of FeTotal, SiO2 and Al2O3 contents in the raw material collected from the mine of the case study are 30.85%, 23.12% and 7.77% respectively. Processes involving combination of classification, washing and dry high-intensity magnetic separation were carried out to upgrade the low-grade iron ore sample to make it suitable as a marketable product. The sample was first ground and each closed size sieve fractions were subjected to washing followed by drying than dry high intensity magnetic separation and it was observed that limited upgradation is possible. As a result, it was possible to obtain a magnetic concentrate of 54.09% with a recovery degree of 89.30% and yield of 62.82% using a magnetic field intensity equal to 2.4 Tesla at the size fraction [-0.125 +0.063 mm].

The Rouina mine is one of the oldest operated mines of iron ore in Algeria, its product is used like an adjuvant in the cement industry because the extracted raw material is considered as a low-grade ore. The present paper investigates on the one hand its mineralogical composition with the aim of understanding the morphology, texture, phase identification and iron properties; and on the other hand studying the influence of washing on its quality. For characterization, X-Ray Diffractions (XRD) of collected samples, analysis of thin sections with scanning electron microscope (SEM), and a sieve analysis followed by washing of each size fraction using a sieve mesh 0.074 µm were adopted. The obtained results revealed that the raw material of the Rouina mine is clayey low-grade iron ore and it is possible to obtain a pre-concentrate through the washing method. This article suggests in addition conducting deep studies of Rouina iron ore with physico-chemical characterization in order to confirm the prior results (mineralogical characterization) and then to permit a suitable enrichment method to be applied with the aim of obtaining a high-grade iron ore acceptable for the metallurgical industry.