Abstract
A scientific and rigorous study on the adsorption behavior and molecular mechanism of collector sodium oleate (NaOL) on a Ca2+-activated hydroxylated α-quartz surface was performed through experiments and density functional theory (DFT) simulations. The rarely reported hydroxylation behaviors of water molecules on the α-quartz (101) surface were first innovatively and systematically studied by DFT calculations. Both experimental and computational results consistently demonstrated that the adsorbed calcium species onto the hydroxylated structure can significantly enhance the adsorption of oleate ions, resulting in a higher quartz recovery. The calculated adsorption energies confirmed that the adsorbed hydrated Ca2+ in the form of Ca(H2O)3(OH)+ can greatly promote the adsorption of OL− on hydroxylated quartz (101). In addition, Mulliken population analysis together with electron density difference analysis intuitively illustrated the process of electron transfer and the Ca-bridge phenomenon between the hydroxylated surface and OL− ions. This work may offer new insights into the interaction mechanisms existing among oxidized minerals, aqueous medium, and flotation reagents.
Highlights
Quartz is one of the main gangue minerals in iron ores [1], and it is the common gangue mineral for most metal oxidized ores, non-metal oxidized ores, sulfide ores, silicate minerals, phosphate minerals [2,3]
The maximum recovery of quartz at pH 12 was only 38%, which is consistent with the flotation phenomena of
The influence of various exchange-correlation functionals on the rationality of α-quartz bulk cells was studied under the cut-off energy of 489.8 eV and a k-point set of 3 × 3 × 2
Summary
Quartz is one of the main gangue minerals in iron ores [1], and it is the common gangue mineral for most metal oxidized ores, non-metal oxidized ores, sulfide ores, silicate minerals, phosphate minerals [2,3]. The separation of quartz from other minerals makes great sense for mineral processing and relevant industries. One of the most efficient mineral processing methods which selectively concentrates target minerals based on their physicochemical properties and differences resulting from the intrinsic properties of ores and modification of flotation reagents, has been widely employed in the separation of iron ores [9,10,11]. It is generally acknowledged that cationic/anionic reverse flotation is one of the Minerals 2019, 9, 450; doi:10.3390/min9070450 www.mdpi.com/journal/minerals
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