Rejection of arsenic minerals in sulfide flotation — A literature review

Ma, Xu; Bruckard, Warren J.

doi:10.1016/j.minpro.2009.07.003

Cited by 45 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…15) Although much effort has been devoted to separating arsenic sulfide using the flotation process, it is known to be difficult to separate arsenic sulfide from sulfide that does not contain arsenic using flotation, due to their similar surface properties. 16,17) In particular, as the surface properties of arsenopyrite and pyrite (FeS 2 ) are very similar, it is difficult to simply separate them using flotation. Only a few studies, to the best of our knowledge, focused on the separation of arsenopyrite and pyrite in an arsenopyrite-pyrite or an arsenopyrite-pyrite-quartz system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flotation Behavior of Arsenopyrite and Pyrite, and Their Selective Separation

2015

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This study investigated the effect of pH and pulp potential (E H ) on the floatability of arsenopyrite and pyrite, which are single minerals, in Hallimond tube, by using xanthate as a collector. On this basis, the study further investigated the selectivity index of arsenopyrite and pyrite, using a mixed sample of arsenopyrite and pyrite. To examine the flotation behavior of each mineral by pH change, flotation was carried out at pH 4 and pH 10. The test results showed arsenopyrite had higher floatability at pH 4, regardless of the potassium ethyl xanthate (PEX) concentration. This is because xanthate ion was oxidized to be stable dixanthogen, which was well adsorbed onto arsenopyrite surface, due to the high E H of pulp. Meanwhile, arsenopyrite had relatively lower floatability at pH 10 than at pH 4, which was because the dixanthogen remained unstable, and was not adsorbed onto the arsenopyrite surface, due to the relatively low E H of pulp. Pyrite had low floatability at both pH 4 and pH 10. Just as for arsenopyrite, the result for pH 10 was caused by the low E H of pulp. Yet, interestingly enough, different from the case of arsenopyrite, pyrite at pH 4 had low floatability, despite its high E H . FTIR analysis was performed, to examine the reason for such contradictory behavior. The analysis result showed that this was caused by poor adsorption with xanthate, due to sulfate ion (SO 4 2¹ ) that was generated by the oxidation of pyrite surface in reaction with oxygen in pulp at pH 4. To further investigate the selectivity index (i.e., the pyrite recovery/ arsenopyrite recovery ratio) of arsenopyrite and pyrite, additional flotation tests were carried out on mixed sample of the two minerals. Different from the flotation behavior of single minerals, the results showed that the recovery of arsenopyrite was lower than that of pyrite, and the selectivity index of arsenopyrite and pyrite was the highest when the PEX concentration was the lowest. Such a different trend in flotation behavior of the mixed sample from the flotation behavior of the single minerals was because the surface oxidation reaction of arsenopyrite, which was more affected by E H among the mixed arsenopyrite and pyrite, generated ferric arsenate, a hydrophilic compound, on the surface of arsenopyrite, resulting in poor adsorption with xanthate; in turn, this depressed the floatability of arsenopyrite.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flotation Behavior of Arsenopyrite and Pyrite, and Their Selective Separation

2015

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“…Doyle also compared the performance of ion flotation with other unit operations such as solvent extraction and ion exchange; for concentrated metal solutions, the performance of ion flotation was relatively poor. Aiming at removing toxic arsenic minerals from pulp solutions, Ma and Bruckard [52] studied the possibility of using ion flotation. They concluded that pre-oxidization of the mineral ores is essential and the addition of a reagent is required to suppress contamination by cuprous species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foam Separation of Metal Ions and the Potential ‘Green’ Alternative to Solvent Extraction

Kinoshita

Nii

2012

SERDJ

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Foam separation has been applied to recover or remove various substances from dilute aqueous solutions in various industries because it is an environment-and cost-friendly process. The literature has been reviewed focusing on the separation of metal ions.From an operational point of view, various methods are discussed for the removal of metal ions from solution, and on the selective recovery of a specific target metal ion.The former applications are designed to purify industrial effluents, and the performance of foam separation is well proven. The latter examples are aimed at recovering valuable metals, which has been shown to be difficult due to the inherent problem of contamination in foam separation. An operation mode was developed to overcome this problem and to enhance the selectivity for separating a specific target metal from solutions containing multi-metals. The method, called continuous counter-current foam separation, was developed, and its performance was demonstrated by the experimental results for Ga(III) separation. Since both high selectivity and recovery was obtained by this method, foam separation is potentially a "solvent-free" alternative to solvent extraction.

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“…Furthermore, for the minerals containing both copper and arsenic, the rejection of arsenic reduces copper recovery, which affects the economic value of the deposit. As a result, it may be more economically beneficial to selectively concentrate arsenic minerals at an earlier stage of the processing (such as froth flotation) and produce a higharsenic low-copper concentrate and a low-arsenic high-copper concentrate which then can be treated separately (Wilson and Chanroux, 1993, Fornasiero et al, 2001, Guo and Yen, 2005, Smith and Bruckard, 2007, Ma and Bruckard, 2009, Long et al, 2012, Long, 2014.…”

Section: List Of Figuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it is challenging to separate them, as the arsenic-bearing minerals are strongly floatable with the conventional collectors. In addition, the standard depressants such as lime, cyanide, sulphide and permanganate are ineffective as the flotation responses of arsenic-bearing minerals are similar to other copper sulphide minerals (Fornasiero et al, 2001, Ma andBruckard, 2009). …”

Section: List Of Figuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The oxidation can promote the adsorption of collectors on the mineral surface or prevent their adsorption by forming a hydrophilic layer on the mineral surface (Fullston et al, 1999a). Hence, studying the oxidation of arsenic minerals is important in understanding their flotation performance (Ma and Bruckard, 2009). …”

Section: Selective Flotation Using Selective Oxidationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Selective flotation of enargite from copper sulphides in complex ore systems

Tayebi-Khorami¹

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Recent research has demonstrated promising results showing the possibility of separating arseniccopper sulphides from other copper minerals by controlling the potential of the flotation pulp. Most of these studies were conducted on single mineral systems, and the selective removal of arseniccopper minerals in real ore systems is not well understood. In real ore systems, the efficiency of the separation strongly depends on the mineralogical characteristics of the ore samples. This study seeks to understand the effect of ore mineralogy on the floatability of enargite in a complex ore system, under a controlled potential flotation environment.A composite of several high arsenic-containing drill core intersections for the high arsenic sample (HAS) and a composite of some low arsenic-containing drill core intersections for the low arsenic sample (LAS) were selected from the Tampakan copper-gold deposit in the Philippines, providing a range of arsenic levels. Arsenic in the HAS sample (enargite) was practically twice that for the LAS sample. The non-enargite copper minerals (NECu) were mostly chalcopyrite and bornite in both samples.Comprehensive size-by-size, chemical and mineralogical analyses were performed on both ore samples. It was observed that the two ore samples had similar mineralogical characteristics in terms of mineral content and liberation distribution, however there are some differences in the proportions of minerals. It was also observed that NECu minerals were mostly distributed to the coarser size fractions, while the proportion of enargite in the finer size fractions was higher than for NECu. The mineral grain size data showed that enargite had the finest grain size distribution compared to other copper minerals.The selective separation of enargite from NECu minerals in a rougher flotation system under controlled pulp potential was investigated for both samples. It was observed that it is possible to selectively separate enargite from other copper minerals after reducing the pulp potential to about -200 mV SHE at pH 11 in the LAS sample. However, no separation between enargite and NECu minerals was observed at a reducing potential for the HAS sample, and enargite did not float very well for this sample as the Eh was changed.The Particle Kinetic Model was used to predict the flotation response of enargite and NECu in the HAS sample based on mineral flotation rates derived from the LAS sample and the mineralogy of the HAS sample. It was observed that the predicted values of enargite recoveries were higher in the HAS sample when compared with the results of actual flotation tests. As the mineralogy of the two ore samples was similar in terms of mineralogical and liberation characteristics, the only reason for the iii poor prediction of the model for the HAS sample was due to the change in the flotation pulp conditions for the HAS sample. There were two possible reasons for this change in the flotation response of the HAS sample. One was the higher levels of pyrite present in the HAS sample com...

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Rejection of arsenic minerals in sulfide flotation — A literature review

Cited by 45 publications

References 43 publications

Flotation Behavior of Arsenopyrite and Pyrite, and Their Selective Separation

Flotation Behavior of Arsenopyrite and Pyrite, and Their Selective Separation

Foam Separation of Metal Ions and the Potential ‘Green’ Alternative to Solvent Extraction

Selective flotation of enargite from copper sulphides in complex ore systems

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