Flotation of Tennantite from Pyrite Copper-Bearing Ores

"This research was aimed to explain the reasons of low floatability of tennantite from refractory pyrite ores of non-ferrous metals and to create a reagent regime for selective increasing a recovery of copper sulfide minerals from arsenic-containing copper pyrite ore. ?opper-zinc ore of the Uzelga deposit has 89% of pyrite, some part as melnikovite; copper is assayed as 3.58% of tennantite and 0.25% of chalcopyrite; there is 2.19% sphalerite. Sulfide minerals are very finely disseminated. Tennantite is genetically related to primary copper sulfides. Graphene was identified on the surface of tennantite by a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) method. The recovery of tennantite was rose up by using the collector M-TF. M-TF is the mixture of diisobutylditiophosphate (DTF) and O-isopropyl-N-methyl (ethyl) (TC) in the certain ratio. M-TF change up a kinetic of copper sulfide flotation in a slightly alkaline medium, but pyrite has slowly floatability at this moment. A depressing effect of thiosulfate ions in a liquid phase of pulp flotation tennantite from pyrite ore has been established. A copper recovery up 14.2% (from 67.7 to 82.0%) into a copper concentrate level off copper grade of 18.65% (butkx) and 18.68% (M-TF) has been increased by the new technology with M-TF compared to a standard technology with butkx. A main copper recovery up to 50 % in an inter-cycle copper concentrate assaying 19-21% Cu in case of using M-TF was gotten. A zinc concentrate with recovery of 50% and a zinc assay of 41.76% by a standard flow sheet with butyl xanthate was obtained. A zinc recovery of 70.3% with a zinc grade of 44.17% by the M-TF technology was achieved.INTRODUCTION The pyrite copper-zinc ores of the Urals region are considered refractory. The distinctive features of these ores include a high content of pyrite (90-95%), the presence of arsenopyrite and arsenical pyrite, and the simultaneous presence of chalcopyrite, bornite, tennantite with the predominance of the latter (Andreasen et al.,2008;.Dobrotsvetov, 2009; Chanturiya et al. 2016). The flotation properties of tennantite differ from those of chalcopyrite (Xumeng Chen, Yongjun Peng, Dee Bradshaw. 2014), which is the reason why a comprehensive study was under taken of the flotation activity of tennantite and a process for its recovery was developed. The proposed agent treatment and flotation process make it possible to produce salable copper and zinc concentrates."