Comprehensive Solution for Zinc Oxide Ore Flotation Reagents

Zinc oxide ores have long been considered among the most difficult to process. Due to their complex mineralogy, fine dissemination, and surfaces often coated with oxide films, traditional collector systems designed for sulfide ores frequently fail to achieve efficient recovery. During flotation, the strongly hydrophilic nature and poor natural floatability of zinc oxide minerals lead to issues such as low reagent adsorption efficiency, unstable froth, and suboptimal recovery rates.

In practical operations, many processing plants struggle to balance concentrate grade and recovery, even after adjusting grinding fineness, pH levels, and frother systems. This not only increases reagent consumption but also directly impacts the overall economic efficiency of the beneficiation process.

In response to this industry pain point, Y&X has developed YX300S, a high-efficiency zinc collector specially used for zinc oxide ore flotation. This product can effectively enhance the hydrophobicity of the mineral surface and improve the selective adsorption capacity of zinc oxide minerals, thereby significantly improving the flotation index, reducing the dosage of chemicals while increasing the recovery rate and concentrate grade, helping the dressing plant achieve more stable and economical production results.

Y&X carries out a zinc oxide mine project in Morocco, using original ore samples. After the ore samples were crushed and mixed, mineralogy analysis samples and mineral processing test samples were obtained respectively.

Table 1 shows the results of the analysis of lead, zinc and elements affecting mineral processing. Table 2 shows the lead phase analysis results and Table 3 shows the zinc phase analysis results.

From the results of multi-element analysis and phase analysis, it can be seen that the recovered elements in this mineral are mainly Pb and Zn.
The content of CaO and MgO in the raw ore is relatively high. Through microscopic analysis, it is mainly dolomite with a small amount of calcite. The floatability of dolomite is similar to that of sphalerite, which makes it difficult to recover zinc oxide.
Mineral Processing Process Design
Through extensive flotation experiments, it has been found that dolomite and calcite have significant adverse interference on zinc oxide flotation, and the reagents cannot effectively interact with zinc oxide. In situations where the consumption of reagents is very high, it is also difficult for zinc oxide to be effectively floated. To address this issue, efficient zinc oxide collectors and efficient depressants for dolomite and calcite have been developed, optimizing the mineral processing technology. The specific beneficiation process involves grinding the material to -0.074mm, with a proportion of 75%. The first step is flotation of lead sulfide, and the second step is flotation of zinc oxide.
Flotation of Lead Sulfide: In the lead flotation stage, a coarse selection is used, and the bottom stream of the coarse selection is fed into the sweeping operation. Collectors are added to the sweeping operation, and the tailings after three rounds of sweeping are the final tailings; The foam of roughing is fed into the cleaning operation, and three times of cleaning are carried out to obtain Lead concentrate products.
Flotation of Zinc Oxide: The tailings from Lead Sulfide flotation are fed into Zinc Oxide flotation. Firstly, a gangue depressant is added, followed by the addition of sodium sulfide and a high-efficiency Zinc Oxide collector for Zinc Oxide coarse selection; The roughly selected bottom stream is fed into the sweeping operation, which adds sodium sulfide and Zinc Oxide high-efficiency collectors. The tailings after three rounds of sweeping are the final tailings; The foam of roughing is fed into the cleaning operation, and sodium sulfide + depressant is added into the cleaning operation. Three times of cleaning are carried out to obtain zinc oxide concentrate products.
Test Result
The analysis of the experimental results is shown in Table 4.

The grade of Lead Concentrate obtained from closed-circuit testing is 55.66%, with a recovery rate of 78.30%; The grade of Zinc Oxide concentrate is 38.15% and the recovery rate is 84.49%.

Efficient Zinc Oxide Collector YX300S: Zinc Oxide is an efficient collector with certain foaming properties, mainly used for the flotation of Zinc Carbonate and Sphalerite, which can effectively avoid the interference of mud gangue minerals on Zinc Oxide flotation. The flotation process is stable and the recovery of Zinc Oxide is good.
Conclusion
The final flotation process flow will be determined for the flotation test of Moroccan Zinc Oxide ore samples. The proportion of grinding fineness -0.074mm is 75%; The Lead flotation stage adopts one coarse selection, three fine selections, and three sweeping selections; The Zinc Oxide flotation stage adopts one coarse selection, three fine selections, and three sweeping selections. The grade of Lead concentrate obtained through closed-circuit testing is 55.66%, with a recovery rate of 78.30%; The grade of Zinc Oxide concentrate is 38.15% and the recovery rate is 84.49%.