An investigation of coal flotation using nanoparticles as a collector

ABSTRACT

The article discusses the application of hydrophobic polystyrene nanoparticles as a collector for coal flotation, aiming to demonstrate the possibility of sorting coal fines with nanoparticles. The results of the flotation tests conducted in this study show that a clean concentrate was successfully obtained from floating high ash coal fines by using nanoparticles. The nanoparticles significantly increased the combustible recovery while kept the concentrate ash content at a low level. Contact angle measurements and electron probe microanalyzer micrographs indicate that the deposition of hydrophobic nanoparticle on coal surface increased the hydrophobicity and microscale roughness of coal particles, which was beneficial to flotation process. Although the current nanoparticles used were effective for coal flotation, the dosage consumption was relatively high due to the coagulation of nanoparticles. This suggests that it is important to increase nanoparticle colloidal stability and improve nanoparticle deposition selectivity for practical applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Coal flotation
• collector
• nanoparticle
• hydrophobicity

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities; [2017XKZD04].