Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

Solid butyl xanthate is usually used as collector to recover copper metal in flash smelting slag beneficiation. Solid butyl xanthate is easy to wet and harden in the actual production process, and there are many problems such as high labor intensity, high safety risk, unstable concentration of artificial dispensing, poor working environment and high pressure of environmental protection. Taking the flash smelting slag of a copper smelting enterprise as the research object, the research and application of aqueous xanthate were carried out from the aspects of prescription research and development, drug property comparison, drug validity period and drug concentration control. The results show that the new aqueous xanthate, which is composed of 70% liquid butyl sodium xanthate + 27% liquid amyl sodium xanthate + 3% stabilizer, can replace the solid xanthate when the concentration is controlled less than or equal to 40%. The effective use period of the new aqueous xanthate is less than or equal to 28 days. It has been proved by industrial practice that the water agent xanthate has both copper sulfide and copper oxide metal collecting ability, which can reduce the loss of copper metal in tailings and has obvious economic benefits.