SOME INDUSTRIAL IMPLICATIONS OF CHANGING FROTHER CHEMICAL-STRUCTURE

This paper discusses the nature of frother chemical structure on the industrial scale use of froth flotation. The difficulty in making frother performance predictions based on strictly fundamental reasoning and/or laboratory batch flotation cell data is discussed. Several levels of frother use guidelines are discussed. Emphasis is placed on integrating the results of many plant tests with many frothers into a general plant use description on frother type as a function of the major chemical groupings available today to plant operators. It would appear that there is enough consistency in the performance of available frother types, including appropriate blending, to enable a plant flotation engineer to improve plant operations in many cases.