Comment on: A review of copper-arsenic mineral removal from copper Concentrates: Graham Long, Yongjun Peng and Dee Bradshaw, Minerals Engineering, Vol. 36-38, pp. 179-186, 2012

摘要

Dear Sirs In the Summary section of the paper by Long et al., the authors claim that "the formation of cuprous xanthate on the mineral surface was determined to be a requirement for copper mineral flotation by Heyes and Trahar (1979) and Mielczarski et al. (1995a)". The iden?tification of the active species in copper flotation systems is more complex than is portrayed in this statement. In the first cited paper, Heyes and Trahar (1979) determined the potential dependence of chalcocite flotation recovery with ethyl xanthate as collector. They found flotation to be effective between two potential limits. The lower limiting potential, at which flota?tion commenced, was significantly below the value at which cuprous ethyl xanthate could form as determined from thermody-namic calculations.