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Atomistic simulation techniques were used to investigate the interaction between the minerals calcite and fluorite with water and methanoic acid. The relative adsorption energies suggest that methanoic acid preferentially adsorbs onto fluorite surfaces, while adsorption of water is energetically preferred over methanoic acid on the calcite cleavage plane in agreement with experiment. The coverage and configuration of adsorbed methanoic acid on the surfaces depends largely on lattice spacing between the cations, and bridging between surface calcium atoms is highly favored. These findings have given an insight into interactions at the atomic level which indicate that modeling techniques should be capable of predicting adsorption behavior and designing collector molecules, which is of central importance to the mineral processing technique of flotation.

The mechanism of adsorption of long-chain alkylamines at pH 6-7 onto quartz was studied using FTIR and XPS spectroscopy. The spectroscopic data were correlated with potential and Hallimond flotation results. For the first time it was shown that (1) amine cation in the first monolayer is H-bonded with surface silanol group and this H-bond becomes stronger after the break in the adsorption characteristics (isotherm, potential, floatability); (2) at the break the origin of the adsorbed amine species changes qualitatively, and along with alkylammonium ion attached to deprotonated silanol group, molecular amine appears at the surface and, as a result, monolayer thick patches of well-oriented and densely packed adsorbed amine species form rendering the surface highly hydrophobic; and (3) at higher amine concentration, bulk precipitation of molecular amine takes place. The counterion was found to influence both these steps. A model of successive two-dimensional and three-dimensional precipitation was suggested to explain amine adsorption on a silicate surface.

a b s t r a c tThe effects of major components of calcium and sulphate species present in recycled process water on galena flotation has been investigated through Hallimond flotation, zeta-potential, diffuse reflectance FTIR spectroscopy and XPS measurements using pure galena mineral. The significance of process water species in flotation has been understood using deionised water, process water and simulated tap water containing equivalent calcium and sulphate ions concentration as in process water.Hallimond flotation indicated marginally lower recoveries of galena in the presence of calcium and sulphate ions using potassium amyl xanthate as collector. Zeta-potential shows the adsorption of calcium ions whereby the potential are seen to increase while sulphate ions have no significant effect. FTIR and XPS studies revealed surface calcium carbonate and/or calcium sulphate species in process water which affected xanthate adsorption. Presence of surface oxidised species such as sulfoxy, hydroxyl species on galena at pH 10.5 in deionised and process water was also revealed.