Room-temperature flotation and heated flotation of tungsten ore

 Flotation is one of the most widely used methods for recovering wolframite and scheelite more effectively. The key to improving the recovery efficiency of wolframite and scheelite by flotation is to upgrade the flotation process and the effectiveness of flotation reagents. With the continuous improvement of wolframite and scheelite flotation technology, most flotation processes are currently divided into heated flotation and room-temperature flotation according to different temperature and other factors.

(1) Heated flotation method

The heated flotation method was invented by Soviet expert Petrov in the 1940s. This method is to concentrate the rough concentrate to 50%~70%, add a large amount of water glass during the slurry adjustment process to adjust the pH of the ore pulp, and use it as an inhibitor to desorb the collector attached to the surface of the gangue mineral, and then use conventional flotation methods to obtain a more ideal tungsten concentrate.

The heated flotation process uses the different resolutions of the collector film generated on the surface of different minerals under special conditions to achieve the purpose of mineral separation. This process is usually applied to the fine separation stage after roughing. It has strong adaptability, but its high cost and high risk factor in production make it have certain limitations.

(2) Normal temperature flotation method

The characteristic of normal temperature flotation process is that it can be carried out at room temperature throughout the process. It mainly relies on the synergistic effect of sodium carbonate and water glass in the roughing process to improve the enrichment ratio of roughing. A large amount of water glass is added in the fine separation stage. After a long period of stirring, the water glass is fully in contact with the mineral before the flotation experiment.

The "lime method" normal temperature flotation process is a kind of normal temperature flotation process. This method increases the floatability difference between tungsten minerals and their gangue minerals by adding lime for stirring in the ore feeding stage, thereby achieving the purpose of improving the flotation effect.

The normal temperature flotation process is mainly used for quartz-type scheelite. Compared with heated flotation, the operation is simpler, and the cost of flotation reagents and energy consumption is also lower.