Study Of Interface Chemistry On Manganese Carbonate Flotation

Several prolems woud be encoutered in manganese carbonate flotation, i.e. high dosage of collector, lacking effective depressant and difficult separation of valuable metal from gang. Pure mineral experiment, flotation solution chemisty calculation, zeta potential test, particle fraction test were used to investigagte the interface reaction between collector, synergist, regulator, metal ions and manganese carbonate. metal ions on manganese flotation as well as the effect of metal ions on manganese carbonate flotation. The paper is aimed to present guideline for manganese carbonate flotations. The paper content and experiments reuslts were as followed:Pure mineral experiments showed:oleic acid had strong collection ability on rhodochrosite and calcite but weak collection to quartz. At low temperature, oleic acid had bad flotation perfomance in alkaline condition. However, the addition of SDBS was able to improve the dispersion and solubility of oleic acid, and thus promoted the collection ability of oleic at low temperature.Sodium silicate is able to depress quartz and separate rhodochrosite from quartz. In pure mineral flotation experiments, SHMP had effective depression ability on calcite and weak depression on rhodochrosite, but showed bad selective depression ability when calcite and rhodochrosite were mixed to float. When NaOH was used to adjust pH value of the slurry, Ca2+,Mg2+ showed depression to rhodochrosite, but when Na2CO3 was used, the bad effect of Ca2+,Mg2+ can be weakened.The open circuit flotation experiments of rhodochrosite ore showed: the concentrate of 17% Mn grade and 65.32% Mn recovery was achieved when treating the feed ore with 10% Mn ore, with Na2CO3 as pH regulator, water glass as depressant, oleic acid+SDBS(3:1) as mixed collector.Flotation solution chemisty calculation showed:rhodochrosite and calcite had the same surface electricity property. When the above two minerals exit together, the calcite surface can be transformed to rhodochrosite and thus causes similar surface properties, resulting in difficult separation of rhodochrosite and calcite. The calculation also indicated that the concentration of Ca2+ and Mg2+ in Na2CO3 solution was lower than that in NaOH solution. So the addition of Na2CO3 was able to reduce the concentration of metal ions to improve flotation condition of rhodochrosite.The results of zeta potential test, FTIR spectra and droplet size test showed:the solubilization of oleic acid was caused by the co-adsorption of oleic acid and SDBS to rhodochrosite surface and the dispersion promotion of oleic acid in presence of SDBS.