ABSTRACT
Phosphate resources are widely spread in earth. However, effective utilization of this mineral is still lacking. The conventional collector for apatite mineral is oleic acid, which has three main drawbacks, insoluble at low temperatures, poor selectivity in apatite flotation, and low collecting ability, resulting in high dosage. In this study, octylic hydroxamic acid was synthesized, and its collecting ability toward two major minerals in phosphate ore apatite and dolomite was investigated. The results show that for the separation of dolomite and apatite, octylic hydroxamic acid had high selectivity and optimum pH of 6–8. Adding collectors can effectively decrease the surface tension of octylic hydroxamic acid and the zeta potential of these two minerals, and the decrease fordolomite was more apparent. By using Material Studio software and IR, it could be seen that the reaction between octylic hydroxamic acid and dolomite represents physical adsorption, while octylic hydroxamic acid cannot interact with apatite.
