Depressant behavior of crude fucoidan in the separation of talc and molybdenite

Molybdenite is an important strategic resource. In the field of mineral processing, flotation is commonly used to enrich and extract molybdenite in the ore. In the flotation process, it is very difficult to separate talc and molybdenite because of their similar structures and natural floatability. Here a novel depressant CF with rich output and low value was demonstrated, which has never been reported in the field of mineral processing, for flotation separation of talc and molybdenite. In this study, single and manually mixed mineral flotation tests, contact angle tests, adsorption measurements, FTIR and XPS analyses were used. It was found that molybdenite can be separated from talc by reverse flotation with 20 mg/L CF as molybdenite depressant, and it can be determined that CF has the main chemisorption on the surface of molybdenite. This finding has important progressive significance for the flotation separation of molybdenite and talc.