Chipakwe Vitalis, Jolsterå Rickard, Chelgani Saeed Chehreh
Minerals and Metallurgical Engineering, Dept. of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, SE-971 87 Luleå, Sweden.
LKAB Research & Development, SE-971 28 Luleå, Sweden.
ACS Omega. 2021 May 19;6(21):13888-13894. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c01551. eCollection 2021 Jun 1.
Processing of materials that originated from tailings of industrial plants (with a wide range of particle size distribution, "PSD") without grinding has several advantages since mines are faced with a lot of pressure to minimize their environmental impacts. This article indicates that the introduction of submicron bubbles (known as nanobubbles, "NBs") to conventional flotation could improve the separation efficiency of valuable minerals from their associated gangue phases. It was demonstrated that metallurgical responses (recovery, grade, selectivity, and kinetics) of NB flotation could improve compared to those of conventional tests. Various hydrodynamic cavitation setups for NB generation may lead to different metallurgical responses. In general, the addition of surfactants (frothers and collectors) for NB generation could increase both mass and water recoveries, which would be key factors on selectivity. Selectivity is also markedly dependent on the PSD of feed, and the selectivity of NB flotation is improved significantly by decreasing the feed size. In general, generation of NBs in the presence of a frother leads to higher flotation metallurgical responses than in the presence of a collector.
对源自工业工厂尾矿（具有广泛的粒度分布，“PSD”）的物料进行无需研磨的处理具有多个优点，因为矿山面临着巨大压力，需要尽量减少其对环境的影响。本文指出，将亚微米气泡（称为纳米气泡，“NBs”）引入传统浮选可提高从相关脉石相中分离有价矿物的效率。结果表明，与传统试验相比，NB浮选的冶金响应（回收率、品位、选择性和动力学）有所改善。用于产生NB的各种水力空化装置可能会导致不同的冶金响应。一般来说，添加用于产生NB的表面活性剂（起泡剂和捕收剂）可提高质量回收率和水回收率，这将是影响选择性的关键因素。选择性还明显取决于给料的PSD，通过减小给料粒度可显著提高NB浮选的选择性。一般来说，在起泡剂存在下产生NB比在捕收剂存在下能带来更高的浮选冶金响应。
