Continuous Online In Situ ATR-IR Spectroscopic Investigation Of Adsorption Of Xanthate On The Minerals Surfaces

Flotation separation of ultrafine particles has been a problem in mineral processing industry, because metal minerals are more and more thin. Main problem of mineral flotation is minerasl separation. In the ore flotation process, with the decreases of mineral particle size and increase of the specific surface, surface properties gradually play a leading role, which increase the difficulty of the separation. Chemistry of mineral surface with other components in the solution can cause complex changes of surface physical and chemical properties. Thus, the surface chemistry of the metal sulfide ore and oxidized ore has been the important topic in theory research.We choose CuO, CuS, PbO, PbS, ZnO and ZnS as the research object in this paper, and using simple precipitation method to prepare these ores. Using precipitation preparation has many advances, easy operation, low requirements for the equipment, high purity, good chemical metrology, and low cost. We using methods of XRD, BET, FTIR to verify these ores, the results show that synthetic samples is pure, without impurities.In the progress of flotation, the pH of solution is important. Because of the state and composition is different in different pH condition, which will affect the efficiency of mineral flotation. According to the method of atomic absorption(AAS) to study the the relationship between solubility of the ores and pH, we deduce that the solubility of ores is relatively large in the scope of the acid, and in the scope of the alkaline, the solubility of CuO and CuS is less than 0.01 mmol·L-1, PbO, PbS, ZnO, ZnS solubility is almost zero. Thus, we chose alkaline condition to do the adsorption experiments.Because of xanthate collector with good selectivity for the flotation of sulfide minerals and is importance to the mineral flotation, the mechanism of xanthate flotation mineral carried extensive research. In order to accurate research the changes of xanthate on the surface of the mineral in the flotation progress, we employ advanced continuous in situ ATR-IR technique to research. ATR-IR can be used to study the adsorption behavior in real-time kinetic monitoring, high accuracy and strong resolution. 2D correlation spectroscopy has the virtues of resolution enhancement, detection of sequential order, identifying the number and peak position of bands in an original band shape, interpretation of multiply overlapped bands in vibrational.According to analysis the adsorption process of minerals adsorbed xanthate, finding a red shift phenomenon in the infrared spectra, and the adsorption of xanthate on the mineral surface is not a simple monolayer adsorption. We deduced that xanthate adsorbed on the mineral surface was in the form of micelles. Fluorescence measurements and electrical conductivity measurements were used to determine. The inflection point of the I1/I3 ratio of pyrene was appeared when xanthate adsorbed at the surface of minerals, which meaned that micelles were formed.