Discussion on difficult-to-float reasons in the flotation of fine-particle copper oxide minerals

Fine-grain disseminated copper oxide minerals are very difficult to float in production due to its special nature. Hallimond tube flotation tests were conducted using malachite pure mineral with different size fractions in order to find out the difficult-to-float reasons. The results obtained showed that the difficult-to-float reason of copper oxide minerals with fine size fraction of-10 microns was due to their tiny particle size coupled with tiny mass.