There are several types of lithium minerals of economic values. These include: spodumene, lepidolite, amblygonite, zinvaldite, and petalite. Most of the lithium production comes from spodumene and petalite to a lesser degree, from lepidolite. Lithium in general belongs to a group of light metals with specific gravity of 0.53g/Cu3.

Development and operating status of the flotation processes are relative to the nonmagnetic iron ores. The interest in the iron ore flotation began in the late 1930s and continues to the present day. There are several processes developed for the beneficiation of iron ores. In a number of cases, the combination of magnetic separation and silica flotation from magnetic concentrate is practiced.In the treatment of disseminated nonmagnetic iron ore beneficiation, a combination of selective flocculation reverse silica flotation is practiced.

The processing of fluorite ores especially of those that contain calcite minerals represents difficult problems due to the fact that the flotation properties of fluorite, calcite, and other gangue minerals are similar. The most commonly used beneficiation process is flotation where acid grade or metallurgical grade is produced depending on the ore type treated.

Potash, the common name for potassium compounds, is also used frequently to indicate potassium oxide (K2O) equivalent of a compound, even though the compound may contain no oxide. For example, the chief compound of potassium in most potash ores is potassium chloride (KCl), while concentrates are sold on the basis of equivalent K2O content (about 60% for muriate). The potash minerals occurring in these deposits are all soluble in water and it is easy to concentrate their solutions to a high percentage of potassium oxides. This chapter deals with the beneficiation of the potash ores from solid deposits.

The best quality graphite product is coarse-grained (larger than 300μm) and has 98% carbon or higher. It is considered that graphite mineral is easy to float. However, the treatment flow sheets can be relatively complex and depends on the type of ore to be treated. The conventional technology for upgrading graphite ore involves milling followed by flotation, regrinding, and multiple cleaning. In spite of that, graphite floats easily with the middling particles adhering to the graphite flakes are reported to the concentrate. Regrinding of the concentrate also breaks coarse particles of graphite, which represent a problem of producing coarse high-grade graphite.

Pollucite mineral is a carrier of caesium and is found along with lithium, feldspar, mica, and the other silicates. Pollucite is an aluminosilicate mineral with variable composition and color. In various research work, two beneficiation methods were developed including direct pollucite flotation and reverse associated mineral flotation.

Zircon minerals belong to the orthosilicate group together with topaz, kyanite, tourmaline, olivine and others. The beneficiation of zircon largely depends on the type of deposit as well as mineral composition. In most cases zircon is found in heavy minerals that contain titanium mineral sand as well as rare earth oxides.

Albite and microcline are the most important commercial feldspar but the products usually contain varying proportions of the other members of the system. The feldspar containing ores are relatively complex and equally contain mica, spodumene, quartz, and other ferro silicate. The ore reserves of feldspar worldwide are large but supplies of pure feldspar are not sufficient. In most of the cases, beneficiation of feldspar ores involves flotation. In this chapter, the beneficiation of feldspar using the flotation technique is presented.

Most of beryllium production comes from beryl and therefore flotation properties of beryl are examined in detail by various research organizations. Because beryl is found in the form of large crystals in various ore types, recovery of beryl from these ores is accomplished by sorting and or selective grinding due to the fact that the hardness of beryl is 7.5–8 (Mohs scale); during grinding, most of the gangue is ground finer than beryl and beryl is left in the coarse fraction, which is recovered by screening.

Although the first production of wollastonite dated back to 1935 in California, USA, there has been very little development testwork especially in flotation done over the years. In a number of operating plants beneficiation is performed using: (1) sorting and (2) magnetic separation. In a few plants reverse flotation of gangue minerals from wollastonite is practiced.