Investigation on interaction behavior between coarse and fine particles in the coal flotation using focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) and particle video microscope (PVM)

ABSTRACT

In this study, interaction between coarse and fine coal particles during flotation was investigated with aid of FBRM and PVM, and explicated by the extended Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (EDLVO).The flotation results showed that coarse coal particles could greatly improve the flotation of fine coal. Analyzing the results of FBRM and PVM revealed that the improvement in the flotation of fine particles was attributed to the fact that a portion of fine coal accumulated or adhered to coarse coal. This is because the total interaction between coarse and fine particles was attractive based on the theoretical calculation of EDLVO.

KEYWORDS:

• Fine particles
• coal flotation
• FBRM
• PVM
• EDLVO theory

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Feng Wu for carrying out surface area analyzer and Chenkai Niu and Wei Wang for guiding us to conduct and analyze the IGC SEA. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No. 51904296) and the project was funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M652024).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [No. 2019M652024]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 51904296].