Abstract
Low flotation efficiency has always been a problem in the separation of low-grade molybdenum ores because of the finely disseminated nature and crystal anisotropy of molybdenite. In this study, a novel kerosene–coal tar collector (KCTC) was prepared and used to explore the feasibility of improving the recovery of fine molybdenite particles. The results showed that KCTC achieved better attaching performance than that shown by kerosene, and the surface coverage and attaching rate constant were improved significantly, especially for finer particles of −38 + 20 μm. Compared with kerosene, KCTC showed more affinity for molybdenite particles and greater adsorbed amounts of KCTC on molybdenite particles were achieved. Moreover, the composite collector was shown to float single molybdenite particles of different sizes, and it was found that the recovery of molybdenite particles of different sizes, particularly in the case of those at −20 μm, was improved dramatically by KCTC. The flotation results of actual molybdenum ores further confirmed that KCTC was beneficial to flotation recovery and the selectivity of molybdenite. This indicated that KCTC is a potential collector for the effective flotation of low-grade deposits of molybdenum ores, and more studies should be conducted on further use in industrial practice.
Highlights
Molybdenum is an important metal with a wide range of applications in metallurgy, the chemical industry, etc. [1,2]
A micro-flotation machine with a 40 mL cell was used to carry out flotation experiments of single molybdenite, and 2.0 g molybdenite particles were weighed for each experiment
More particles attached to the bubbles due to greater kerosene–coal tar collector (KCTC) adsorption, leading to better mineralization of fine molybdenite particles, which resulted in a better flotation recovery rate [36]
Summary
Molybdenum is an important metal with a wide range of applications in metallurgy, the chemical industry, etc. [1,2]. Nonpolar hydrocarbon oils (saturated hydrocarbons) such as diesel oil, kerosene and transformer oil are used as the most common collectors for molybdenite flotation [7,8,9,10] They have more affinity for the nonpolar faces of molybdenite, created by van der Waals forces and hydrophobic forces [11,12,13], rather than for the polar edges. It is well known that coal tar is a complex mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons including polycyclic and heterocyclic compounds and fused ring compounds [20] that has the potential to be a candidate as a collector to enhance the flotation of fine-grained molybdenite. In this paper, the influence of coal tar on the flotation performance of fine-grained molybdenite of different sizes was explored and the underlying mechanism was revealed
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