Copper and molybdenum ores are strategic non-ferrous metal resources. With the rapid development of China's economy, there is a great demand for copper and molybdenum ores in the market. However, China's copper resources are relatively scarce, and there are few rich ores, many poor ores, scattered mining areas, many spots, and few quantities; Molybdenum resources are rich in reserves, but mainly primary molybdenum ores with low raw ore grade. Therefore, copper molybdenum polymetallic ore is one of the main sources of copper and molybdenum. The characteristics of copper molybdenum polymetallic mineral resources, such as poor ore, more rich ore, less ore, serious co association, more other useful components, fine embedded particle size, etc., make it difficult to separate copper molybdenum ore. Therefore, the selection of separation process is particularly important.
At present, it is a common method to treat copper molybdenum ore, with mature technology and good beneficiation indexes. The flotation process of copper molybdenum ore mainly includes mixed flotation, preferential flotation and equal flotation. The treatment methods of the three flotation processes are different, and the properties of copper molybdenum ores are also different.
For copper molybdenum ore, mixed separation and re separation of copper molybdenum ore is one of the commonly used technological processes, because the floatability of molybdenum ore and copper ore is similar and the associated is serious. It is usually used when the grade of copper molybdenum ore containing molybdenum ore is low. It is characterized by few kinds of reagents, simple and easy to control process, relatively high overall recovery rate of copper and molybdenum ores in the mixing stage, and the realization of comprehensive recovery and utilization of resources to a large extent.
In the process of copper molybdenum ore flotation separation, effective pretreatment and inhibitor selection are very important. Generally, xanthate (butyl xanthate) is used as mixed flotation collector, hydrocarbon oil (kerosene) as auxiliary collector, and terpineol oil as foaming agent, lime and water glass as adjusting agent. Pretreatment mainly includes concentrating mixed concentrate, heating mixed concentrate and adding oxidant. The purpose is to remove and decompose the residual agent in the copper molybdenum mixed concentrate, but it should not cause "secondary pollution" and affect the separation of copper molybdenum ore.
When treating copper molybdenum ore with low grade, it is more appropriate to adopt preferential flotation to ensure the recovery rate and grade of molybdenum concentrate and also consider the comprehensive recovery of copper. When the copper in copper molybdenum ore is seriously secondary, with high oxidation rate, fine particle size of chalcopyrite, and is seriously wrapped by gangue, the flow can be used for preferential flotation of molybdenum ore, regrinding separation of copper molybdenum ore, recovery of copper from flotation molybdenum ore tailings, collector of molybdenum ore mineral is kerosene+diesel, and copper molybdenum ore separation inhibitor DY08. In this case, the preferential flotation process is more cost-effective than the mixed flotation process.
Flotation of copper molybdenum ore is usually used to treat low-grade porphyry copper ore. Generally speaking, lime is selected for mixed flotation and preferential flotation to realize the separation of copper molybdenum ore and sulfur, while lime has inhibition effect on molybdenum ore, which is not conducive to the recovery of molybdenum ore. Such problems can be avoided by adopting selective collector to separate copper molybdenum ore and sulfur, without using or using less lime, which has little interference to the next copper molybdenum ore separation and molybdenum ore cleaning. AP Ⅱ is usually used as a floatable collector for copper molybdenum, which not only ensures a high recovery rate of copper molybdenum ore in the floatable operation, but also facilitates the separation of copper molybdenum ore.
To sum up, most of the copper molybdenum separation operations choose mixed flotation, but when processing some low-grade copper molybdenum ores, priority flotation or equal flotation is also used. The characteristics of difficult copper molybdenum separation determine that ore properties should be taken into account when separating. The grade, embedded particle size and other characteristics of copper and molybdenum ore in the raw ore will affect the selection of flotation process, dosage of drugs, etc., and then affect the economic cost of beneficiation and the quality of beneficiation indicators. Therefore, it is suggested that all mine owners should first carry out copper molybdenum ore separation to determine a better flotation process and obtain an ideal rate of return on investment.
