Flotation technology research on a silver bearing lead zinc sulfide ore

A silver-bearing lead zinc sulfide ore is difficult to be efficiently separated because of the finely disseminated of valuable minerals and close inlaid relation with gangue minerals such as calcite.To obtain a good flotation results, the selective flotation process is adopted in this paper, and the effect of grinding fineness and reagent in lead-zinc flotation operation are investigated.The results show that with the grinding fineness of -0.074 mm accounting for 80%, the selective flotation of lead minerals in natural pH pulp environment could be realized by using zinc sulfate and sodium sulfite as sphalerite depressant and BK919 as galena collector.In zinc flotation operation, lime is adopted as pyrite depressant, and copper sulfate and butyl xanthate are used as sphalerite activator and collector respectively, which can achieve good zinc recovery results.In closed-circuit tests, flowsheet of one roughing, two scavengers, three cleanings and middling sequential return is adopted both for lead and zinc flotation operation.From raw ore with Pb 1.74%, Zn 2.86%, Ag 24.44 g/t, lead concentrate of 58.25% Pb with a recovery of 85.39% and zinc concentrate of 45.09% Zn with a recovery of 82.05% are obtained, respectively.Meanwhile, the Ag content in lead concentrate is 582 g/t, and the Ag recovery is 67.58%, which realizes the efficient comprehensive recovery of valuable components in the resource.