Reducing the adhesion of mica on arsenopyrite surface using sodium phytate and the application in flotation separation

ABSTRACT

The adhesion of clay minerals into sulfides concentrate is one of the key problems of mineral processing industry. In this study, sodium phytate (SP) was used as a dispersant in mixed mica and arsenopyrite system. The addition of mica affected the rheological property of arsenopyrite pulp, and this effect could be mostly reduced after the addition of SP. The reflection polarizing microscope results confirmed the adhesion behavior of mica with arsenopyrite to form the aggregate structure; and the addition of SP could disperse them from each other, which is regarded as advantageous to the flotation separation. Adsorption test results revealed that the SP molecules selectively adsorbed onto mica surface. XPS results showed that the P-O groups in SP anions mainly adsorbed with the Al active sites on mica surface, resulting in the greater electrostatic repulsion between mica particles, mica and arsenopyrite particles. This is the mechanism for mica/arsenopyrite dispersion. In flotation tests, SP exhibited well performance in increasing the flotation indexes. A 6 × 10⁻⁵mol/L of SP enlarged the recovery difference between arsenopyrite and mica from 19% to 60.0%. In real ore flotation, it also showed better performance regardless compared with the system without dispersant or with traditional dispersant SHMP.

KEYWORDS:

• Adhesion
• flotation
• dispersant
• arsenopyrite
• separation

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of the Doctoral Foundation of Southwest University of Science and Technology (No. 20ZX7149) and the Sichuan Science and Technology Program of China (No. 2022YFQ0074; 2021YFG0269; 2022YFS0453).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Statement of novelty

In the present study, sodium phytate (SP), a natural antioxidant and environmentally friendly food additive, was employed as the mica dispersant in the mica/arsenopyrite pulp. The mechanism was investigated from the perspective of rheology and adsorption. The good dispersion performance of SP was examined through micro flotation and the real ore flotation tests. It showed better performance compared with the traditional dispersant.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province [2021YFG0269, 2022YFQ0074, 2022YFS0453]; Doctoral Fund of Southwest University of Science and Technology [20ZX7149].