Atomic insight into the activation mechanism of feldspar by sodium oleate in flotation separation of quartz and feldspar: XPS, AFM, and molecular dynamics

ABSTRACTAs we all know, sodium oleate (NaOL) is usually used as a collector for oxidized minerals, but in this study, it is used as an activator for feldspar to separate from quartz. Therefore, the adsorption mechanism, topography, and configurations of NaOL on the quartz and feldspar surface were investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscope, and molecular dynamics simulation at the atomic level. The results revealed that NaOL preferably interacted with the Al atoms on the feldspar surface mostly in the form of chemical adsorption and made the feldspar surface blurry and rough, so NaOL could activate feldspar and enhance its flotability. However, NaOL hardly reacts or is easily desorbed from the quartz surface. Thus, the adsorption differences of NaOL between the quartz and feldspar surfaces contributed to realize the effective separation of quartz and feldspar.KEYWORDS: FeldsparquartzNaOLactivatorchemical adsorption Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).CrediT authorship contribution statementJiwei Lu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review and editing. Nailing Wang: Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing – review and editing, Funding acquisition. Shuangke Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Ziqin Lin: Writing – review and editing. Qingbo Meng: Resources, Supervision. Lixia Li: Resources and Supervision.Additional informationFundingThe authors would like to thank the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. N2201010), GDAS’ Project of Science and Technology Development (No. 2020GDASYL-20200103103), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51704057) for financial support.