The impact of bacteria of circulating water on apatite-nepheline ore flotation

Abstract

A new phenomenon has been identified and studied–the impact of bacteria on the benefication process of non-sulphide ores using circulating water supply–a case study of apatite-nepheline ore. It is shown that bacteria deteriorate the floatability of apatite due to their interaction with active centres of calcium-containing minerals and intense flocculation, resulting in a decrease of the flotation process selectivity thus deteriorating the quality of concentrate. Based on the comparative analysis of primary sequences of 16S rRNA genes, there have been identified dominating bacteria species, recovered from the circulating water used at apatite-nepheline concentrating mills, and their phylogenetic position has been determined. All the bacteria were related to γ-Proteobacteria, including the Acinetobacter species, Pseudomonas alcaliphila, Ps. plecoglossicida, Stenotrophomonas rhizophila. A method of non-sulphide ores flotation has been developed with consideration of the bacterial factor. It consists in use of small concentrations of sodium hypochlorite, which inhibits the development of bacteria in the flotation of apatite-nepheline ores.

Keywords:

• Apatite-nepheline ore
• circulating water
• bacteria
• flotation

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Program “Biodiversity” of Presidium of Russian Academy of Sciences and JSC “Apatit”.