Ore dressing is a production operation that prepares raw materials for metal smelting and the chemical industry. Froth flotation has become one of the most important methods of mineral processing. Almost all mineral resources can be separated using flotation.
Flotation is currently widely applied in the processing of ferrous metal ores dominated by iron and manganese, such as hematite, smithsonite, and ilmenite; precious metal ores like gold and silver; non-ferrous metal ores including copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, and antimony, such as sulfide minerals like galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, chalcocite, molybdenite, and pentlandite, as well as oxide minerals like malachite, cerussite, hemimorphite, cassiterite, and wolframite; non-metallic salt minerals such as fluorite, apatite, and barite; and soluble salt minerals like sylvite and rock salt. It is also used for the separation of non-metallic minerals and silicates, including coal, graphite, sulfur, diamond, quartz, mica, feldspar, beryl, and spodumene.
Flotation has accumulated extensive experience in the field of mineral processing, with continuous technological advancements. Even low-grade and structurally complex minerals previously considered industrially unusable can now be recovered and utilized (as secondary resources) through flotation.
As mineral resources become increasingly leaner, with useful minerals distributed more finely and heterogeneously in ores, the difficulty of separation increases. To reduce production costs, industries such as metallurgy and chemicals demand higher quality standards and precision for processed raw materials, i.e., separated products.
On one hand, there is a need to improve quality; on the other hand, flotation increasingly demonstrates advantages over other methods in addressing the challenge of fine-grained minerals that are difficult to separate. It has become the most widely used and promising mineral processing method today. Initially applied to sulfide minerals, flotation has gradually expanded to oxide minerals, non-metallic minerals, and others. Currently, billions of tons of minerals are processed by flotation worldwide each year.
In recent decades, the application of flotation technology is no longer limited to mineral processing engineering but has expanded to environmental protection, metallurgy, papermaking, agriculture, chemicals, food, materials, medicine, and biology.
For example, flotation is used to recover useful components from intermediate products of pyrometallurgy, volatiles, and slags; to recover leach residues and precipitated products from hydrometallurgy; for deinking of recycled paper and fiber recovery from pulp waste liquid in the chemical industry; and for extracting heavy crude oil from riverbed sands, separating small solid pollutants, colloids, bacteria, and trace metal impurities from sewage, which are typical applications in environmental engineering.
With improvements in flotation processes and methods, as well as the emergence of new and efficient flotation reagents and equipment, flotation will find broader applications in more industries and fields. It is important to note that the use of flotation processes involves higher processing costs due to reagents (compared to magnetic and gravity separation); strict requirements for feed particle size; numerous influencing factors in the flotation process, demanding hight tech precision; and wastewater containing residual reagents that can harm the environment.
Post time: Aug-26-2025