Selective recovery of minerals by flotation.

摘要

A method of recovering a target mineral from an ore containing the target mineral and an iron sulphide mineral comprising the steps of: a) grinding the ore to liberate target mineral from the iron sulphide mineral; b) forming a pulp of said ore; c) selecting a collector having the structure as follows: X-R-Y where R is a branched or straight chain hydrophobic hydrocarbon or polyether chain, and X and Y represent metal coordinating functional groups, d) add the collector to the pulp at a concentration at which the target mineral is able to be floated in preference to the iron sulphide mineral; and e) subjecting the pulp to froth flotation. The metal coordinating sulphur based functional groups may be identical or different.