Promotion of oxidation pretreatment on sulfidation of cuprite surface and its contribution to flotation

This paper investigated the effects of oxidation pretreatment on the sulfidation of cuprite surface and its promotion on flotation, the interaction mechanism of H2O2 on the cuprite surface was researched by adsorption measurement, ICP-OES and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The flotation tests showed that the floatability of cuprite was improved by oxidation pretreatment with H2O2. Results of XPS analyses indicated that the copper polysulfide and disulfide species on cuprite surface increased with the addition of H2O2. As proved by the adsorption and ICP-OES measurement, the addition of H2O2 improved the adsorption of Na2S and NaBX on the cuprite surface. Further, the DFT calculations identified the interaction between H2O2 and the copper on cuprite surface, and the calculation results indicated that the common adsorption of H2O2 and HS- on the cuprite (1 1 1) surface was stronger than that of HS- ion alone. Therefore, the addition of H2O2 activated the surface sulfidation of cuprite facilitating the flotation.

Automated summary

This study investigated the promotion of H2O2 on the sulfidation and flotation of cuprite surface through various experiments and analyses. The results showed that the addition of H2O2 can improve the flotation performance of cuprite.