For more than a century froth flotation has served as one of the critical unit operations in mineral processing. Although generally very effective, there are situations where conventional froth flotation chemistries are inefficient. For these difficult cases, we have been exploring the use of hydrophobic polymeric nanoparticles as flotation collectors particularly for nickel sulfide ores, that respond poorly to conventional molecular collectors. Effective nanoparticle collectors must satisfy three requirements: (1) the nanoparticles should be colloidally stable in the flotation media; (2) the nanoparticles should specifically adsorb onto the desired mineral particles; and, (3) the nanoparticles should be sufficiently hydrophobic to promote mineral particle attachment to air bubbles. From a colloid chemistry perspective, these are conflicting requirements. The goal of work was to apply combinatorial chemistry to make large nanoparticle libraries and to use high throughput screening techniques to narrow the field of candidate nanoparticle types.<br/>Described are: the nanoparticle library development based on click chemistry; new high throughput screening assays for colloid stability and surface energies; and, laboratory flotation results. Our results show that it is possible to optimize nanoparticle surface chemistry to achieve both hydrophobicity and colloid stability. In a broader context, this work demonstrates the utility of high throughput techniques in optimizing flotation chemistries.

High throughput screening of nanoparticle flotation collectors

254th National Meeting (2017)

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