Impact Factor:3.712
DOI number:10.1016/j.jre.2021.05.004
Journal:Journal of Rare Earths
Key Words:Nonane-1,1-bisphosphonic acid (C9-BPA); Monazite; Flotation; First-principles calculation; Rare earths
Abstract:Monazite ((Ce, La)PO4) is one of the major types of light rare earth minerals from which the light rare earth elements cerium (Ce) and lanthanum (La) are economically extracted. Flotation is extensively used to recover fine-grained monazite. Sodium oleate (NaOL) is considered as the collector with strong collecting ability for monazite flotation. However, this study shows that its collecting ability is still limited. In this paper, a phosphonic acid, nonane-1,1-bisphosphonic acid (C9-BPA), was employed as the novel collector in place of NaOL. Flotation experiments show that even when the C9-BPA dosage is less than one-fifth of the NaOL dosage, the monazite recovery using C9-BPA as the collector is approximately 22 wt% higher than that using NaOL. The mechanism by which C9-BPA adsorbs on monazite was investigated using zeta potential, infrared (IR) spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements as well as first-principles calculations. Zeta potential measurements show a more significant decrease in the zeta potentials of monazite after the addition of C9-BPA compared to those after the addition of NaOL. For C9-BPA-treated monazite, the characteristic peaks of C9-BPA are observed in the IR and C 1s XPS spectrum, whereas for monazite treated by NaOL, no characteristic peak of NaOL was observed. Experimental results show that C9-BPA has a stronger affinity towards the monazite surface than NaOL as confirmed by the higher adsorption energy of CP-BPA on the monazite surface (‒204.22 kJ/mol) than NaOL (‒48.48 kJ/mol). This study demonstrates an extensive application value and prospect of C9-BPA in monazite flotation and helps design novel collectors with strong collecting ability for monazite flotation.
Indexed by:Journal paper
Correspondence Author:Mengjie Tian
Discipline:Engineering
First-Level Discipline:Mining Industrial Engineering
Translation or Not:no
Included Journals:SCI
Links to published journals:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1002072121001241#undfig1