Investigation on the enrichment of augengneisses of the Çine area/Aydin

The need to utilize large augengneisses deposits near Menderes region becomes important in present time, in addition to utilizing sodium feldspar. Today, Turkey imports about 50.000 tons of sodium feldspar from other contries. The demand to sodium feldspar increases by about 15 to 20 percent each year, thus, the need to utilize augengneisses deposits becomes vital for the country in the future.The aim of this study is to process feldspar containing potassium and sodium from augengneisses deposits using mineral processing methods. The processes used in this investigation are high gradient wet magnetic methods, flotation, and combination of these two methods. A product suitable to industry was produced by using magnetic separation to remove titanium and iron first, then, flotation was applied to separate mica and heavy minerals. In final stage, feldspar was separated from quartz, again by feldspar flotation.