The Mechanism of the Effect of Pre-Magnetized Butyl Xanthate on Chalcopyrite Flotation

Abstract

In this work, we applied the technology of magnetic treatment to the flotation of chalcopyrite. The mechanism of the effect of pre-magnetized butyl xanthate on chalcopyrite flotation was studied using monomineral flotation tests, adsorption tests, conductivity tests, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), etc. The monomineral flotation test results showed that, after the magnetization pretreatment of butyl xanthate solution, the chalcopyrite flotation recovery was increased by nearly two percentage points, and the dosage was reduced by 4–10 mg/L at the same recovery. The adsorption, FTIR, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity test results all showed that the magnetization pretreatment increased the dissolved oxygen content and promoted the oxidation of butyl xanthate to double xanthate with better selectivity to chalcopyrite. An electrochemical analysis showed that the magnetization pretreatment of butyl xanthate reduced the corrosion potential and corrosion current density of chalcopyrite surface and inhibited the self-corrosion process of chalcopyrite surface. The flotation test results of actual copper sulfide ore showed that pre-magnetized butyl xanthate could increase the copper recovery of copper concentrate by 3.06 percentage points and the sulfur recovery of sulfur concentrate by nearly 3 percentage points, and effectively reduce the mutual content of copper and sulfur concentrates.

Comparative investigation on capture characteristics of chalcopyrite and hematite in PHGMS process

“…However, separating chalcopyrite from other sulfide minerals using flotation has some obvious drawbacks due to the large consumption of reagents: the process can be very complicated due to their similar floatability (Yan et al, 2020;Liu and Zhang., 2024), and the reagent used can increase the production cost and bring pollution risks. In comparison, pulsating high-gradient magnetic separation (PHGMS) has emerged as a promising alternative method due to its cost and environmental-friendly advantages (Zykin et al, 2022;Qiu et al, 2022b;Zheng et al, 2023). For example, recent reports have proved that pulsating high-gradient magnetic separation (PHGMS) is effective for the separation of chalcopyrite from other minerals with similar floatability, such as molybdenite and talc (Chen et al, 2021;Xian et al, 2022).…”