Concentration - Flotation - The Flotation of Fluorite (Mining Tech., July 1947, TP 2163)

This paper deals with the flotation of the mineral fluorite (calcium fluoride) and of two associated gangue minerals, calcite and quartz. The aim of the investigation was to produce "acid-grade" fluorite, which must contain less than one per cent of silica. Several reagents are used successfully in practice for floating fluorite from its ores. Oleic acid is the most widely used collector, usually at temperatures above 60°C, with sodium silicate as a dispersant for quartz and quebracho or tannin to depress calcite. Sulphides (e.g., galena) are often removed first by xanthate flotation. Many investigators23 report results in which more than 80 pct of the fluorite is recovered in a concentrate assaying 96 pct or more of fluorite and less than I pct of silica. This investigation was undertaken with the intention of floating the gangue, which is the minor constituent of the ore, from the fluorite. Hence emphasis was first placed on the cationic compounds that float quartz. No satisfactory separations were obtained in this way, and other reagents were investigated to discover whether these were more effective than oleic acid in floating fluorite from quartz in the usual way. The first part of the paper describes experiments with several long-chain collectors available commercially. Most of this work has been by captive-bubble and cylinder flotation tests, with some batch tests in a flotation machine. The second part describes the use of sodium cetyl sulphate as a collector for fluorite and includes laboratory tests and extension of the work to batch tests in the flotation machine. A method for determining the adsorption of sodium cetyl sulphate on fluorite has been developed and is described. Theory of Collection by Paraffin-chain Salts It may be assumed that these compounds are adsorbed at the mineral surface in one or more of three ways outlined by Kolthoff:12 1. Exchange adsorption between lattice ions in the mineral surface and collector ions in solution. Closely related is adsorption by the collecting mechanism postulated by Taggart,17 in which there is metathesis between the collector and the mineral cation or anion. 2. Exchange .adsorption between adsorbed gegen ions (p. 67, ref. 19) and collector ions in solution. 3. Adsorption of nonelectrolytes (polar-nonpolar) without displacement of adsorbed ions. With cationic collectors, inorganic cations in the solution (e.g., hydrogen ion) compete with the collector ions and therefore act as depressants, while inorganic anions have the same effect with anionic collectors. From this follows the general conclusion that ions of the same charge as