Flotation of boron minerals: discussion

Experimental flotation/bubble attachment results for 21 different alkali halides (Yalamanchili et al., 1993; Yalamanchili and Miller, 1994b) confirmed that the flotation response of soluble salt minerals with weak electrolyte collectors can best be explained by the adsorption of oppositely charged collector colloids rather than by the adsorption collector ions and/or neutral molecular dipoles as originally suggested by many researchers (Fuerstenau and Fuerstenau, 1957; Schubert, 1967; Roman et al., 1968). In addition, the flotation of certain alkali oxyanions (Pizarro et al., 1993) and double salts such as schoenite and kainite can be explained by the same collector colloid adsorption mechanism (Miller and Yalamanchili, 1994). The borax flotation results reported by Celik et al. need to be examined in terms of the above mentioned surface charge/collector colloid adsorption model. Unfortunately, the authors seem to be unaware of this recent work that nicely describes soluble salt flotation with weak electrolyte type collectors such as amines and carboxylates.