Investigation on the flotation recovery and kinetics of coking coal using the mixture of oleic acid and kerosene as a novel collector

Abstract

In this investigation, the flotation behavior of coking coal using the mixture of oleic acid (OA) and kerosene as a novel collector was further studied through flotation tests, supplemented with optical microscope analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, and wet-screening analysis. Flotation results showed that both the flotation recovery and rate constant increased with the increasing proportion of OA in the novel collectors. The improved collectivity can be ascribed to the enhanced aggregation tendency between coal particles with the addition of OA. However, the concentrate ash similarly increased as concentrate yield, and the XPS results showed that the novel collector had relative lower selectivity than kerosene. The potential reason to explain the lower selectivity is that OA affected fine high-ash particles greater than that of the coarse particles.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Coking coal
• OA
• flotation
• collectivity
• selectivity

Acknowledgments

The financial supports for this work from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the grant No. 51874072, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under the grant No. N180106006 and N180104017 are gratefully acknowledged. Zhanglei Zhu also appreciates China Scholarship Council (No. 201906080099) for the financial support for his visiting study to Michigan Technological University, USA.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.