To adequately utilize the critical rare earth resource by flotation, finding effective collectors has attracted increasing attention in the mining industry. A promising collector group is dithiocarbamate ester surfactant. In this study, S-[(2-hydroxyamino)-2-oxoethyl]-N, N-dibutyl-dithiocarbamate (HABTC), S-[(2-hydroxyamino)-2-oxoethyl]-N, N-dipropyl-dithiocarbamate (HAPTC), and S-[(2-hydroxyamino)-2-oxoethyl]-N

Bubble size and froth velocity are the most important froth characteristics used for evaluating and controlling flotation systems. Bubble size is often measured using watershed and edge detection algorithms. These algorithms typically result in the over-segmentation of big bubbles or the under-segmentation of small ones. Froth velocity is usually determined by processing successive images using various

Wear due to compression and abrasion from particles is a critical issue for high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) mills. Understanding the evolution of wear provides useful insight on its mechanisms and helps to mitigate the issue so mills are operated at their optimal states. This work presented numerical simulations based on the discrete element method (DEM) to analyse the formation and evolution of

Driven by environmental concerns and restrictions arising from them, the mining industry has instituted an initiative to recycle process waters within plant operations. This has the two-fold advantage of using minimal freshwater for mining, thus freeing the water for other applications, and limiting the release of potentially toxic discharge to the environment. However, in recycling their process water

Hydroxyethylidene diphosphonic acid (HEDP) is an industrial environmental reagent, often used as a chemical raw material in industrial water treatment, household cleaning products and personal care products. In this work, the effort to use HEDP to the flotation of pyrite containing fine-grained serpentine was conducted, and the selective separation of serpentine and pyrite was accomplished. During

Indium (In) is a rare precious metal with extremely low abundance in the Earth's crust, mostly occurring as impurities in sphalerite, and it is closely related to the high iron content in sphalerite. Flotation is generally used to recover such minerals. However, there are few for the flotation mechanism of sphalerite containing indium and iron impurities. In this paper, the adsorption of xanthate (C4H9OCSS−)

Fertilizers have been given significant attention due to their critical need for agriculture yield to meet the demand for food growth arising from population growth. The demand for potassium fertilizer (metric tons of K2O) has increased by 12% between 2015 and 2020. Therefore, the concern about the limited availability of soluble potassium resources in the southern hemisphere has become a key research

The reverse flotation of Itabirite iron ore is typically performed after a desliming step in which most of the sub-10 µm particles are removed. This is done to limit processing problems such as poor flotation recovery of SiO2 due to slime coatings, increased slurry viscosities, unmanageable froths and increased losses of hematite particles due to entrainment. However, the rejection of ultrafine particles

Tetraalkyldiglycolamides are known for their high extracting efficiency of rare earth elements (REEs) from nitric acid solutions (1–6 mol/L). Nevertheless, solid-phase extractants based on diglycolamides (DGA) are poorly studied for REEs extraction. This paper explores the design and synthesis of novel REEs adsorbents by grafting silica with diglycolic acid-based ligands. The newly developed solid-phase

This paper presents the results of an ultrasonic-assisted alkali-acid leaching process for concurrently recovering rare earth elements (REEs) and coal from South African run-of-mine (RMC) and discard (DC) coal. The response surface methodology (RSM) was used during the alkali leaching of DC to evaluate and optimise the process parameters. REE recovery increased while ash content decreased with increasing

Heterogenite is an important cobalt oxide mineral, however, few investigations on the surface properties and flotation recovery of heterogenite were conducted. In this study, the effect of sulfidization on the surface property and flotation behavior of heterogenite was studied for the first time, using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray

Sphalerite flotation is conducted under Cu2+ activation system, whereas the selective separation of pyrrhotite is difficult due to the inevitable activation effect of Cu2+, which requires a large amount of lime to depress pyrrhotite flotation. In this study, the conventional collector butyl xanthate and a novel collector ML8 were compared to the selectivity of the flotation separation of sphalerite

Cemented paste backfill (CPB) technology has the advantages of safety, environmental friendliness, economics, and efficiency. This method offers assurances for practical underground mining and tailings pond management. The bed drainage channel structure and coarse particles with diameters above 45 μm were reconstructed and quantitatively characterized in 3D by computed tomography (CT) for the whole

Grinding ores in conventional ball mills demands high energy consumption, resulting in relatively high operating costs in a typical mineral processing industrial plant. Whether in the initial stages of a mining project or during its operation, conducting tests to determine the processing circuit’s energy consumption throughout the life of mine is necessary in order to reduce such high operating costs

High voltage pulse discharge (HVPD) is a new type of crushing technology with good application. Existing studies have focused on the crushing characteristics, with less reports on follow-up work. This study magnetization roasts hematite ore after mechanical crushing and HVPD, analyzing the difference in the roasting effect between the two crushing methods by establishing a new system of HVPD-magnetization

To improve the flotation recovery of tungsten minerals, 4-alkoxy benzohydroxamic acids containing C3 alkyl (C3OBs), namely 4-propoxy benzohydroxamic acid (POB), 4-iso-propoxy benzohydroxamic acid (IPOB) and 4-allyloxy hydroxamic acid (AOB), were designed as scheelite and wolframite collectors. The micro-flotation results uncovered that C3OBs exhibited stronger collecting ability towards Pb(Ⅱ)-activated

Rock fracturing through microwave irradiation has received significant attention recently as a viable pretreatment for improving the energy efficiency of comminution processes. This study presents a numerical analysis on the effects of microwave heating on the mechanical properties of hard rock. In particular, the reduction of the uniaxial compressive and tensile strength of granite-like rock due to

Segmenting blasted stockpile particles in open-pit mines is essential for improving mining operations. However, complex rock textures often challenge traditional segmentation models. This paper presents an enhanced U-Net model that leverages depth-separable convolution and feature depth concatenation to enhance segmentation performance while reducing model complexity and training time. We evaluate

This research presents a systematic study of the effect of galena (PbS) on the electro-assisted reductive leaching of chalcopyrite in HCl solutions. The electro-assisted reduction of chalcopyrite and current efficiency were assessed varying the pulp density of chalcopyrite concentrate in the presence of different amounts of galena. The dissolution of galena and continuous electrodeposition of lead

This paper mainly investigates the role of hydroxyl on the desilication of goethite by anionic reverse flotation. Accordingly, micro-flotation experiments suggested that the activation effect of Ca(II) on quartz was obviously better than that of goethite in the high alkaline sodium oleate (OL) system.. Furthermore, the Zeta potential also confirmed that the selectivity of Ca(II) ions on quartz surface

Ni and Co, mostly produced from sulfide resources, are critical energy metals required for the green energy transition. A significant portion of the Ni and Co in the processed ore, particularly for disseminated mafic/ultramafic ores, is not recovered due to the deportment to fine slimes which has been dumped as tailings during the flotation process. This study applied an alkaline glycine-based leaching

In this study, combined precipitants of sodium metasilicate and sodium hydroxide were used for effectively separating lithium (Li) from magnesium (Mg) in salt lake brine and meanwhile generating magnesium precipitates with high MgO/SiO2 molar ratios to produce high-performance refractory materials. When the mole of combined precipitant was 1.0, Li/Mg precipitation separation can be achieved with Mg

The upgrading technology of low-grade iron ores by alkaline treatment was investigated in this study. The basic experiments (evaluation of the effects of solvent types, treatment temperature, holding time, solvent concentration, particle size, and solid–liquid ratio) were carried out with the alkaline hydrothermal treatment in a small batch-type reactor. The gangue removal rate in the 5 M NaOH hydrothermal

Removing calcite is a tricky problem in smithsonite flotation because of its better floatability. 1-Hydroxyethylidene-1,1-diphosphonic acid (HEDP), a scale inhibitor in water treatment industry, was chosen as a calcite depressant. This study validated the effectiveness of HEDP in separating smithsonite from calcite by flotation using sodium oleate (NaOL) as the collector, and obtained a 70% recovery

Herein, new insights on the breakage mechanism of magnetite quartzite via high voltage pulse discharge were proposed. The liberation of magnetite quartzite was significantly enhanced by high voltage pulse discharge. The ground products liberations of pulse numbers 300 were improved by 20.93% at grinding time 3 min. The iron distribution rate of high voltage pulse breakage in −0.074 mm were improved

The impact of sulfuric acid pretreatment on the surface property of oxidized pyrrhotite (OX-pyrrhotite) and its application in flotation desulphurization of magnetite concentrate were investigated in this study. OX-pyrrhotite using sodium butyl xanthate (BX) collector performed a poor floatability. After sulfuric acid pretreatment, OX-pyrrhotite exposed a new sulphide surface similar to raw pyrrhotite

The separation of spodumene and quartz is relatively difficult as they have similar physicochemical properties. To solve this problem, the role of carboxylate chitosan (CCS) in the separation of these two minerals using dodecylamine (DDA) as the collector was studied, and the depression mechanism was discussed through contact angle test, zeta potential test, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy

In the present study, the selective leaching of Ni over Fe from Cd-depleted spent Ni-Cd batteries has been presented using a glycine-citrate solution. These findings can be considered experimental proof of our concept of developing an eco-friendly protocol for the green recycling of both Cd and Ni. In the present study, the pertinent factors affecting Ni leaching, including glycine concentration (0

The demand for raw materials, in particular, for those classified as critical materials, has increased considerably due to the ongoing energy transition and the corresponding surge in the use of renewable energy technologies. In this context, this review paper analyses literature on reserves, resources, and production data of critical materials, which are required for the energy transition, to understand