The invention relates to the field of mineral separation, and provides a low-quality
lithium ore separation and enrichment method which comprises the following steps: crushing
lithium ore to obtain particles with the average particle size of 1-5mm; weighing the crushed
lithium ore particles and
solid sodium hydroxide, mixing, and carrying out ball milling for 1-5 hours; adding water into a ball milling product, and carrying out ball milling for 5-20 hours until the average particle size of
solid particles is 1-50 microns; carrying out strong
magnetic separation on the ball-milled ore pulp to obtain
magnetic minerals; filtering and
drying the non-magnetic ore pulp to obtain filter residues; water is added into the filter residues to obtain
slurry with the
mass concentration of 20%-40%,
sodium hexametaphosphate is added into the
slurry, the pH of the
slurry is adjusted to be 7-9, stirring is conducted for 3-7 min, then didecyl dimethyl
ammonium chloride is added, stirring is conducted for 5-8 min, flotation is conducted for 5-10 min, and lithium concentrate is obtained. A
combined method of alkali
grinding dissociation, strong
magnetic separation and selective flotation is adopted, the technical
bottleneck of efficient enrichment of the low-quality lithium ore is broken through, and no complex flotation
reagent is needed.