Investigation of the effect of clay minerals on the performance of Sungun copper ore flotation

The influence of clay minerals on flotation performance has been extensively studied by making synthetic samples with different percentages of clays but the impact of a mixture of clays in an ore and the effect of available clays on the ore itself has not been studied. The presence of a combination of clay minerals in the feed of the Sungun Copper Concentration Plant causes various problems such as reduction of grade and recovery of final concentrate. It is evident that understanding the behavior of clays in flotation performance of this ore can be an effective step in improving plant operation for feeds with high percentages of clays. Therefore, in order to investigate the influence of clay minerals on the flotation performance of Sungun ore, the flotation behavior of two samples with different clay percentages was investigated in the rougher flotation step. The obtained results indicated that for the sample with low clay content, 6.12% of illite and 2% of kaolinite, there is a reduction in the recovery and froth bubble size. On the other hand for the sample with high clay content, 100.46% of illite and 2.36% kaolinite, the volume of froth decreased but there was not reduction in the final recovery. Illite had no effect on flotation process and observed difference was related to the percentage of muscovite mineral in two samples (6.62% and 11.13% for high and low clay samples, respectively). Increasing clay minerals to more than 10% increases pulp viscosity. The addition of kaolinite by 20% by weight reduced the number of large bubbles and discolored the foam, reducing the recovery from 81.25 to 71.43% and grade from 5.38 to 2.5%.