Effects of modulus and dosage of sodium silicate on limestone flotation.docVIP

Maejo Int. J. Sci. Technol. 2010, 4(03), 397-404 Maejo International Journal of Science and Technology ISSN 1905-7873 Available online at www.mijst.mju.ac.th Full Paper Effects of modulus and dosage of sodium silicate on limestone flotation 1,* 2 1 2 Danda S. Rao , Tadiparthi V. Vijayakumar , Shivakumar Angadi , Swarna Prabhakar and Guntamadugu B. Raju2 1 Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar - 751 013, Orissa, India 2 National Metallurgical Laboratory - Madras Centre, CSIR Madras Complex, Taramani, Chennai – 600 113, India * Corresponding author, e-mail: dsrao@immt.res.in Received: 15 April 2010 / Accepted: 15 September 2010 / Published: 21 September 2010 Abstract: Sodium silicates are probably one of the oldest and most widely used industrial chemicals. Among a wide variety of applications, an important one is as a depressant in flotation. In this investigation, the effectiveness of sodium silicates of different values of modulus (silica- to-soda ratio) and dosage was investigated on a low-grade siliceous limestone sample having CaO = 45.10%, SiO = 15.60% and LOI = 36.03% from Jayantipuram mine of Andhra Pradesh, 2 India. Direct flotation (flotation of carbonate minerals) was adopted to reduce the silica content and enrich CaO using laboratory-scale flotation process batch tests. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical tool was used for evaluation of the influence of operating parameters, viz. the modulus and dosage of sodium silicate, on the flotation. The study indicated that a modulus of 2.19 and a dosage of 0.6 kg/ton is optimum for the flotation for the low-grade siliceous limestone sample. Keywords: siliceous limestone, direct flotation, sodium silicate, mineral depressant __________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction One of the most important groups of chemicals used in mineral processin