酸化銅鉱石の選鉱に関する研究

抄録

Green copper ore is one of the typical oxidized copper ore and it usually contains malachite and chrysocolla. Generally, copper carbonate minerals are recovered by sulfidizing flotation with xanthate type collector, however, copper silicate minerals are not separated efficiently by flotation. Fatty acid flotation is also applied to green copper ore, but separation of calcite is very difficult under any flotation conditions.
The ore samples tested are composed of malachite and crysocolla accompanying calcite, quartz, andradite and a little quantity of mica. Malachite is usually needle crystal, fibrous aggregate, crust, vein or tiny grain and is finely intermixed with chrysocolla.
chrysocolla. Solubilities of copper minerals in ammonium hydroxide were studied and it was found that malachite is soluble easily, on the contrary, chrysocolla is only soluble by adding of ammonium salts such as ammonium chloride or ammonium sulfate. Proportions of malachite and chrysocolla in an ore can be determined quickly according to difference of the solubility.
Sulfidizing flotation process was applied to the ore and favourable performance was obtained by stage flotation using sodium sulfide and mercaptobenzothiazole. Some flotation results and their conditions were described.