Study On Adsorption Characteristics And Mechanism Of Flotation Reagents On Indium, Agium And General Sphalerite Surface

Deposit of rare metals resources in the earth’s crust is very scarce, where indium and germanium are usually limited. The two elements are of non-renewable important strategic resources and widely used in high-tech fields like electronics, semiconductor, known as the "high-tech" elements.The main carrier minerals of indium and germanium in complex polymetallic sulfide ore are in the forms of different sphalerites, called as "indium and germanium-beard sphalerites". However, much attention in mineral processing was only paid on the recovery of nonferrous metal minerals, flotation parameters such as grinding fineness, pH, aeration rate, stirring intensity, dosage of flotation reagents and flotation times were usually decided by the flotation tests of main metals to be recoveried. Besides, flotation behaviors of the carrier minerals were regarded as same as sphalerite or marmatite. Effects of indium and germanium in the lattice of sphalerite on surface configuration, electronic structure and flotability were usually ignored, therefore the optimal flotation condition of he carrier minerals could be difficult to find due to lacking of sufficient theoretical study on their surface properties and flotation behaviors, resulting lower recoveries of the main metal and associated rare metals.In views of the above problems, the ordinary sphalerite, indium-beard sphalerite and germanium-beard sphalerite have been selected as the objective samples, their physicochemical property such as element distribution, morphology, hydrophobicity and electronic structure were studied in details by quantum chemical calculation and some modern analysis technolgies. Then, the effects of pH, activator (copper sulfate), collectors (butyl xanthate, butylamine aerofloat and diethyldithiocarbamate) and frother (pine oil) on flotation behavior of three kinds of the sphalerite were studied by pure mineral flotation tests. With the aid of understanding above flotation tests, scanning electron microscope, energy spectrometer, infrared spectrometer and ultraviolet spectrophotometer were used, followed by the quantum chemical calculation to build the interaction models between reagents and mineral sufaces. After that, the influence of In, Ge and Fe in lattice substitution of a variety of agent adsorption or substitution on the sphalerite surfaces were investigated from the perspective of atomic and molecular. Based on above findings, a newly effective activator X-43 used for improving grade and recovery of sphalerite concentration and rare metals in low alkali pulp was developed and successfully applied in commercial operation.In this thesis, the flotation theory of indium and germanium-beard sphalerites covering the enrichment and development of the basic theory of selective flotation of the complex polymetallic sulfide ore had been established preliminarily, which provided favorable conditions for developing new effective reagents and theory foundation and technology support for recoverying carrier minerals of rare metals. Therefore, these research results have important theoretical significance and practical value.