Flotation Behavior and Synergistic Mechanism of Benzohydroxamic Acid and Sodium Butyl-Xanthate as Combined Collectors for Malachite Beneficiation

Jianyong He,Wei Sun,Daixiong Chen,Tong Yue,Qiqi Zhou,Shengda Chen,Jianyu Zhu,Bo Hu,Bingxuan An,Mengfei Liu,Chenyang Zhang

doi:10.3390/min11010059

Abstract

Sulfuration flotation is the most widely used technology in malachite beneficiation. However, the inhomogeneity of malachite surfaces usually results in a non-uniform sulfuration surface. The motivation of this work is attempt to adopt different functional combination collectors to enhance the sulfuration flotation of malachite. Accordingly, the flotation behaviors and adsorption mechanisms of benzohydroxamic acid (BHA) and sodium butyl-xanthate (SBX) on the surface of malachite were systematically investigated using flotation tests, zeta-potential measurements, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and first-principle calculations. The test results of vulcanization flotation showed that the combined collectors of SBX with BHA possessed a higher recovery than only using SBH by 20%, indicating that there may be a synergistic effect between BHA and SBX. The IR and Raman spectroscopy demonstrated that both BHA and SBX could chemically adsorb onto the malachite surface. The density functional theory (DFT) calculation results further indicated that the combined adsorption energy of BHA and SBX was much lower than that of only BHA or SBX, which confirmed the synergistic effects of BHA and SBX on the malachite surface. This work may shed new light on the design and development of more efficient combined flotation reagents.

Highlights

As an important non-ferrous metal, copper mainly exists in the form of sulfide [1,2,3,4].With the decrease of copper sulfide resources, the utilization of oxidized copper ore has been paid more and more attention
The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis results of the pure mineral of malachite used in the experiment were as displayed in Figure 1; the malachite sample had over 98% of malachite, so the sample was pure enough for the following research
In this work, when sodium butyl-xanthate (SBX) and benzohydroxamic acid (BHA) were mixed with a molar ratio of 3:1, the recovery of malachite reached 90%, possessing a much higher recovery—by about 20%—than only using SBX

Summary

Introduction

As an important non-ferrous metal, copper mainly exists in the form of sulfide [1,2,3,4]. With the decrease of copper sulfide resources, the utilization of oxidized copper ore has been paid more and more attention. Malachite is the most representative of oxidized copper minerals [5,6]. It belongs to the category of monoclinic systems [7]. Malachite occurs in the oxidation zone of copper sulfide ore. It is a secondary mineral produced by weathering, possessing the characteristics of high hydrophilicity and complex structure [8,9,10]

Methods

Results

Conclusion