History of the Flotation Process at Inspiration (9d917e4d-984d-4d16-a593-2f5b03870a33)

RUDOLF GAIL, Miami, Ariz.-Since I wrote the paper on flotation which is in your hands, important developments have taken place, and, for this reason, I will try in a few words to bring it nearer up to date as far as the Inspiration plant is concerned. You, may have noticed that in the Inspiration concentrator, flotation is not solely relied upon for the recovery of the coarser material, but that flotation tailings are split into a sand and a slime product on drag classifiers. The sand product is treated on tables which thus supplement the work of the flotation machines. Extensive tests have shown, us that, if we wanted to, we could leave out these tables and substitute additional flotation machines, as they will make fully as good, if not a better recovery than tables on the deslimed feed, but the treatment would be more expensive, especially in view of the fact that oils are required which cost more than those which we are now using in our main flotation plant. We have, however, decided to apply flotation treatment to our table middlings. I would also like to add a few words regarding the treatment of oxidized copper ores. Although our experience shows that the addition of hydrogen sulphide and other soluble sulphides effects a very good recovery of copper carbonates with certain ores, we have not been able to prove that we could use it advantageously for the ore mixture which we are treating in our concentrator, and for this reason, have looked toward leaching for extracting the carbonate and silicate copper that we are losing now. Experiments in this direction are going on and are giving very encouraging results. It may interest you to hear that we intend to use limestone for the precipitation of the copper which goes into solution, as electrolytic precipitation seems to be out of the question on account of the diluteness of the resulting solutions, and precipitation by iron was rightly objected to on account of the unavoidable contamination of the water supply. We feel very hopeful about the success of our limestone precipitation which, if it holds what it seems to promise, will develop into a novel feature of copper metallurgy.