Rational polymer design for solid–liquid separations in mineral processing applications

A review of polymeric dispersant stabilisation of titania pigment

“…Anchoring groups must be capable of being strongly adsorbed onto the particle in order to have a polymeric dispersant adsorbed on the pigment surface. Many studies have been undertaken to find appropriate polymeric molecules for this purpose [43][44][45][46][47][48]. Examples of functional groups that can be used to anchor polymeric chains to mineral oxide particles are amines, ammonium and quaternary ammonium groups, carboxylic, sulphonic, and phosphoric acid groups and their salts, acid sulphate and phosphate ester groups [15,43,48,49].…”

“…The use of polyacrylic acid to disperse titania pigment is well documented [9,[16][17][18][55][56][57]. Polyacrylamide copolymers have also been widely used to disperse mineral particles including titania [16,48,50,[58][59][60][61]. The industrial use of acrylamide-containing polymers has increased due to the possibility of synthesis over a wide molecular weight range, in varying ionic forms and degrees of substitution.…”

An in situ ATR–FTIR study of polyacrylamide adsorption at the talc surface

“…Talc is often depressed by naturally derived polysaccharide based polymers, whose polydispersity and wide variability in composition can cause inconsistent performance in flotation circuits. Synthetic polymers of controlled molecular weight and structure have been shown to exhibit greater flotation consistency [1].…”

The Effect of Seaweed Glue in the Separation of Copper–Molybdenum Sulphide Ore by Flotation

“…The trend in recent years has been to focus on special polymers for this purpose [10][11][12]. The key point is the selection of the distinctive functional group and molecular weight to ensure that the polymer acts appropriately by imparting the correct surface properties on the particular gangue mineral (e.g., inclusion of hydroxyl groups in the polymer to impart hydrophilicity) [13].…”