A Theoretical Study On The Interaction Of Sulfhydryl Collectors On Sulfide Mineral Surface

The development of effective concentration methods for sulfide minerals is the key for the mineral processing industry. The most important and widely used method is froth flotation. In this paper, with different collectors and minerals, the interaction has been investigated. By the analysis of the result of geometry structure, electronic structure and the interaction energy, it has been found that the relationship between the collectors and different sites of the cluster and the effect of the structure of collectors on the adsorption.The results got from the galena's show that, when the surfactants adsorbed on apex and edge, the bond between surfactants and the cluster is very firm and the interaction mode is chelate as possible as they can. As well as, the distance of the interaction is approached to the Pb-S bond length of the galena. While, on the surface, the interaction is not as strong as they on the apex or the edge and the monodentate is always employed and the distance becomes long. Therefore, the collectors opt to adsorb at the apex and edge sites. Furthermore, we found that the interaction of EO is always stronger than ES's by compared their energy of interaction. Through the NBO analysis, it has been found that the O atom is sp² orbital hybrid which is easy to make a delocalized system with the -CS₂ moiety. The delocalized system is good at scattering the feedback-electrons from adsorbed Pb atom, in order to making the interaction more stable. So it can infer that the better collectors would be got, if the O atom in the EO is replaced by the easier delocalized atom or moiety such as N atom.The result got from the Chalcopyrite's computation shows that the adsorption between cluster model and collectors employed "Dual-core-S-bridge bond". And through the geometry analysis, it can be found the interaction between Cu atom in the cluster and collectors is better than Fe atom's. Furthermore, NBO analysis shows that the Fe atomic valence in the chalcopyrite has four single-electrons, while, the Cu atom without single-electron.