Flotation mechanism of cassiterite with octanohydroxamic acid

REN Liuyi; QIU Hang; QIN Wenqing; ZHANG Ming

Abstract：To explore the collecting capacity of octanohydroxamic acid on cassiterite,flotation tests using octanohydroxamic acid,benzohydroxamic acid and salicylhydroxamic acid as collectors were conducted.The adsorption mechanism was analyzed by adsorption measurement,infrared spectroscopic analysis,Zeta potential measurements,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy detection and solution chemistry calculations.The flotation experiment results show that the collecting ability of the octanohydroxamic acid is stronger than that of benzohydroxamic acid and salicylhydroxamic acid.The best flotation recovery of 91.79％ can be obtained with octanohydroxamic mass concentration of 50 mg/L and pH value at about 10.The adsorption capacity test results show that the maximum adsorption amount of octanohydroxamic acid is 0.23 mg/g when the pH value is 10,which is in line with the flotation tests of cassiterite.XPS detection,Zeta potential and FT-IR spectra results show that the chemical adsorption mainly occurs on the surface of cassiterite for octanohydroxamic acid,while the physical adsorption may also exist.Floatability of cassiterite is dominated by the ion and molecular association component formed by the interaction between octanohydroxamic acid and cassiterite surface.Octanohydroxamic acid can be used as an efficient collector because of the formation of strong hydrophobic association component on the surface of cassiterite.