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Abstract
The improvement of the flotation of acanthite fines from a finely disseminated ore through the addition of sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP) as the dispersant has been studied in this work. This study was carried out on the silver scavenger concentrate from the Fresnillo concentration plant in Mexico. The experimental results have shown that the dispersion processing by adding SHMP as the dispersant greatly increased the separation efficiency and the flotation rate of acanthite fines from the ore. This increase was much more remarkable for smaller mineral particles. It has been found that the improvement might be attributed to the fact that SHMP increased simultaneously the electric double layer repulsion and steric repulsion between minerals (valuable and gangue) particles in aqueous suspensions upon the adsorption of polymetaphosphate anions on the mineral surfaces, and thus eliminated the hetero-coagulation of the fine mineral particles in the aqueous ore suspension.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The financial support to this work from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) of Mexico under the grants No. 48436Y and No. 92506 is gratefully acknowledged.