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

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.

Difficulties and Recent Achievements in Flotation Separation of Fluorite from Calcite—An Overview

“…Several studies have found that the combination of collectors can improve both the collecting ability and selectivity of reagents by leveraging the advantages of different collectors [12,78,79].…”

Synergistic Effect of Sodium Dodecyl Benzene Sulfonate on Flotation Separation of Magnesite and Dolomite with Sodium Oleate Collector

“…Secondly, the synergist improves the solubility and dispersion of the collector in water by reducing the surface tension of the water, thus enhancing the efficiency of the collector. In addition, the synergist may form new compounds with the collector, changing the way the collector acts [19,20]. Due to improving the performance of fatty acid collectors, synergists are widely used in the flotation of low-grade oxidized ores.…”

An investigation into using benzohydroxamic acid as a collector for sulfide minerals

“…BHA is known for its ability to form strong chelates with metal ions (Adiguzel et al, 2017, Kozlov et al, 2013, Schraml, 2000. It has been evaluated as collector in froth flotation of wolframite (Liu et al, 2019, Yang et al, 2014, monazite and dolomite (Espiritu et al, 2018), cassiterite (Cao et al, 2020, ilmenite (Fang et al, 2018, smithsonite (Wang et al, 2017), malachite (Zhang et al, 2021), rutile (Cao et al, 2019), muscovite mica (He et al, 2018), scheelite (Han et al, 2017, Wei et al, 2020, and rhodochrosite (Cui et al, 2023) minerals, as well as including pyrochlore-bearing (Gibson et al, 2017, Gibson et al, 2015 and rare earth (Jordens et al, 2016) ores. The adsorption mechanism of hydroxamic acids on the mineral surfaces, which involves a combination of chemical and physical interactions, can vary depending on the type of mineral and frother, pH, temperature, and presence of other chemicals, such as metal cations in the flotation system (Khalil and Fazary, 2004, Pavez and Peres, 1993.…”