The effect of water quality change on copper flotation

Abstract

Given the significant consumption and future demand for water resources, this paper intends to find the conditions for using a flotation process with different water quality. One of the alternatives is using water under secondary treatment with industrial water mixtures to partly recycle domestic wastewater and maximize metallurgical benefits. Results show that using wastewater (only with secondary treatment) in flotation is detrimental to copper recovery. However, molybdenum recovery is significantly improved. For mixtures with 50 [%] wastewater, 50 [ppm] frother, 20 [ppm] collector, and pH 10, copper recovery decrease amounts to 0.4 [%], while molybdenum shows a 2.4 [%] recovery increase. In addition, copper concentrate grade decreases by 1.4 [%], while molybdenum grade remains. Therefore, using wastewater is viable, particularly in the case of molybdenum. So, this study proposes using of water mixtures in the copper depression stage to improve molybdenum recovery.