A novel pH-responsive flocculant for efficient separation and recovery of Cu and Mo from secondary resources via selective flocculation-flotation

A novel pH-responsive flocculant, P(AM-DEA-DPL) (PADD), was first used for efficient separation and recovery of Cu and Mo from secondary resources via selective flocculation-flotation. The selective flocculation behavior, flocculation-flotation and deflocculation of fine molybdenite, chalcopyrite and quartz were researched by single and artificial mixed ore. Moreover, fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, zeta potential, contact angle and fluorescence microscope were utilized to reveal the flocculation and deflocculation mechanism. The results showed that PADD had an excellent selective flocculation of fine molybdenite and chalcopyrite particles in the presence of sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP), which originated from the bridging molecular chains, electrostatic adsorption and hydrophobic interaction among PADD and the fine hydrophobic particles. Moreover, the floated flocs obtained from the artificial mixed ore of fine molybdenite, chalcopyrite and quartz could be well dissociated to small size particles when the slurry pH was adjusted to 6.0, resulting from the enhanced deprotonation effect and electronegativity of PADD. It would facilitate the further separation of molybdenite and chalcopyrite from the mixed concentrate via flotation. Therefore, PADD hold a broad application prospect with the efficiently recovering and further separating molybdenite and chalcopyrite from secondary resources containing Cu and Mo.