Flotation mechanism of octylic hydroxamic acid on diaspore

Bauxite resources are widely spread in the earth. However, the effective utilization of this mineral is still under infant. The conventional collector for diaspore mineral is oleic acid. It has three main drawbacks which are highly insoluble, large dosages in bauxite flotation, and low selectivity, which hinder its application in industry. In this research, octylic hydroxamic acid was synthesized, and its collecting ability toward two major minerals in bauxite-diaspore and kaolinite was investigated. The collecting power of various reagents for diaspore are shown as follows: oleic acid<octylic hydroxamic acid; while the collecting power for kaolinite was like this: octylic hydroxamic acid<oleic acid. It is shown that octylic hydroxamic acid has the capability of high collectivity and good selectivity. The optimum pH was determined to be 8–9. Zeta potential test revealed that the anionic collectors-octylic hydroxamic acid and oleic acid had been adsorbed on the surface of diaspore and kaolinite, meanwhile the adsorption for diaspore was more remarkable. By the adsorptive capability and IR tests, the adsorption of octylic hydroxamic acid on diaspore was determined to be a process of chemical absorption, which was greater than that of oleic acid.