Flotation of molybdenite in the presence of microemulsified collector

In this paper molybdenite flotation using microemulsified collector was reported. The flotation performance of microemulsified collector and conventional diesel was compared. This study is a prelimi-nary investigation which uses pure molybdenite mineral in a modified Hallimond tube. The pH tests showed that the highest recovery of molybdenite in the presence of diesel and microemulsion was ob-tained at pH=6, reaching the recoveries of 93% and 90%, respectively. In the case of obtaining similar results, it was observed that the microemulsion consumption was lower in comparison to diesel. In the flotation tests with microemulsified collector the recovery slightly decreased because too large collector amount caused formation of more unstable bubbles. The contact angle measurements showed that the microemulsified collector was more effective for increasing the hydrophobicity of molybdenite surface. An adsorption model was proposed and it was suggested that the non-ionic surfactant present in the mi-croemulsified collector formed a continuous bimolecular layer, resulting in the increased surface hydro-phobicity. The accomplishment of this research demonstrated the viability of the use of microemulsified collector in molybdenite flotation, attempting to simplify the molybdenite flotation process, especially replace the conventional emulsified collector with high energy consumption and difficult storage.