Study on Improving Flotation Effect and Mechanism of Fine Anthracite by Polyacrylamide, Sodium Silicate and Sodium Oleate

The flotation performance of clean coal with different reagents and pretreatment agents was investigated. The study examines the efficient recovery of anthracite coal using polyacrylamide flotation pretreatment. The mechanism of pretreatment agents and anthracite was investigated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), zeta potential measurements and focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM). The wetting behavior and flotation performance of anthracite and pretreatment agents were investigated using contact angle measurements and series of flotation tests. The coal samples were treated with reagents like kerosene, sec-octanol and pretreatment agents like polyacrylamides, (cat-ionic polyacrylamide, non-ionic polyacrylamide, an-ionic polyacrylamide), sodium silicate and sodium oleate to investigate their impact on coal surface properties and the subsequent flotation performance. The optimum dosage of kerosene was found to be 10 kg/t and that of sec-octanol was 1.84 kg/t. Moreover, the optimum dosages of cat-ionic polyacrylamide, sodium oleate and sodium silicate were 200 g/t, 350 g/t and 500 g/t respectively. The yield of clean coal of cat-ionic polyacrylamide was 70.70 %, ash content of clean coal of cat-ionic polyacrylamide was 11 %. The sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) has the yield of 66.66 % and the ash content of 13.9 %. The results indicated that the cat-ionic polyacrylamide demonstrated the most substantial improvement in flotation performance, particularly when used in conjunction with kerosene and sec-octanol.