Why is it so difficult to flotate spodumene?

Spodumene and gangue minerals such as feldspar and mica are silicate minerals with similar crystal structures and surface properties, making flotation separation difficult.

In addition, there are often large amounts of unavoidable ions such as Fe3+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ in the slurry. Although unavoidable ions can activate spodumene, they can also activate gangue minerals such as quartz and feldspar, reducing the flotation separation effect of spodumene. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically study the flotation behavior of different gangue minerals and their impact on the flotation behavior of spodumene.

One of the difficulties in spodumene flotation is the influence of sludge. The sludge is mainly derived from primary sludge and secondary sludge produced by gangue minerals that are easy to mud after grinding, such as chlorite, mica, etc. The sludge cover Covering spodumene affects flotation, and also absorbs a large amount of flotation chemicals, resulting in waste of chemicals. In order to avoid the interference of sludge, desliming operations are commonly used in industrial production to remove such sludge in advance. At present, the desliming operation of the mineral processing plant adopts high concentration, strong stirring, and multiple times of washing and desliming before entering the flotation process. This process not only complicates the process, but also has a low desliming rate, and the overall economic benefit is not high.

At present, most of the collectors used in flotation have certain defects, which are mainly reflected in the poor selectivity of anionic collectors, poor low temperature resistance, difficulty in dissolving and dispersing agents, and the sensitivity of cationic collectors to slime. For example, when using sodium oleate as a collector, metal cations need to be added to control the selectivity of flotation, and the dosage is large. The selectivity of spodumene flotation inhibitors also needs to be improved. Commonly used inhibitors in production practice include Na2CO3, citric acid, lactic acid, lignosulfonate, etc. These agents still have problems in many aspects such as environmental protection, dosage, and stability.

In addition, it is difficult to utilize the return water of the flotation reagent system. The return water contains a lot of flotation reagents and its composition is relatively complex, making it difficult to purify the return water.