Polymetallic copper-lead-zinc ores flotation process transforming based on MLA

Sulfide copper ores are commonly accompanied by pyrite, galena, and sphalerite, which creates a substantial diffi-culty in achieving selective separation during the flotation process. Even with the progress made in flotation tech-niques, there is an ongoing critical demand for efficient approaches that can reduce the impurity levels in the con-centrate. The concentrates obtained from the Xinyuan mine facility were analyzed using AMICS, revealing that the similar surface properties of minerals like chalcopyrite, bornite, galena, and sphalerite predominantly contribute to the elevated impurity content in the concentrates, with unliberated impurities being of secondary importance. To decrease the presence of liberated or unliberated impurities, the new flotation process includes regrinding and more selective reagents. This new flotation process has effectively increased the recovery rate of copper from 83.33% to 90.32%, while reducing the recovery rates of lead and zinc to 4.72% from 10.56% and to 3.14% from 4.51%, respec-tively, in copper concentrate. Additionally, it has resulted in an improvement in both the grade and recovery of lead, increasing from 55.57% to 61.14% and from 74.37% to 84.95%, respectively. Likewise, the grade and recovery of zinc have seen an increase, reaching from 52.60% to 55.47% and from 83.73% to 88.16%, respectively.