Investigation on matching relationship between surface characters and collector properties: Achieving flotation separation of zinc oxide minerals from quartz

Abstract

There are multiple factors that affect flotation separation performance. However, most studies only focus on the influence of a single factor, and neglect to study matching relationships among multiple other factors. In this paper, improved separation performance of zinc oxide minerals from quartz was achieved by modifying the surface characteristics of zinc oxide minerals and selecting a suitable collector for matching each minerals. Based on the semi-soluble character of smithsonite, octylaminodiacetic acid disodium salt (ODA) was selected as the more suitable collector than N-lauroylsarcosine (LSA). Compared with smithsonite, the hemimorphite surface has a more negative zeta potential and lower active site content. Therefore, ODA showed poor collecting ability for hemimorphite flotation. To improve the flotation recovery of hemimorphite, Zn(II) was added as an activator. The results of the mixed ternary minerals flotation test revealed that hemimorphite achieves selective activation by smithsonite; the recovery of the concentrate was 82.7 %, and the Zn grade reached 45.3 % when the concentration of ODA was 100 mg/L without the addition of zinc ions. The analysis results of zeta potential measurements, FT-IR analysis, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis showed that Zn(II) facilitated the adsorption of collectors by providing new active sites on the hemimorphite surface and changing the surface characteristics of hemimorphite.