Effects of Interfacial Hydroxylation Microstructure on Quartz Flotation by Sodium Oleate

Quartz, a common inorganic nonmetallic mineral, is usually removed or purified by beneficiation, normally flotation. Given the strong polarity of the quartz surface, it is easy to hydrate to form a hydroxylation layer, which makes it impossible to float quartz with sodium oleate (OL) used alone. An ideal flotation method for quartz is preactivation with Ca2+, followed by collection with OL. Herein, the effects of surface hydroxylation on the adsorption of the anionic collector OL on the quartz surface before and after Ca2+ activation are systematically investigated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results show that the displacement adsorption of surface hydroxyl substituted by OL- is not feasible in thermodynamics, and the OL- can only bind to the H atoms of the hydroxylated quartz surface via hydrogen bonds, namely, hydrogen binding adsorption. Due to the electrostatic repulsion and steric hindrance effect induced by the surface hydroxylation structure, the adsorption ability of OL- on the quartz surface mediated by hydroxyl bridges is very weak, which is insufficient to realize quartz floating. However, Ca2+ ions are easily adsorbed on the hydroxylated quartz surface, providing favorable active sites for subsequent adsorption of OL-, thus becoming a credible solution for the industrial flotation of the strong hydrophilic mineral quartz. These findings shed some new insights for accurately understanding the flotation mechanism of strongly hydrophilic oxide minerals and are beneficial to promoting the development of mineral flotation fundamentals.