Fine particles flotation - Recent trends

The flotation recovery of fines has been a challenging problem to the world mineral industry. Fine particles are slow to float and also interfere with the floatability of coarse/medium sized particles. There has been considerable thurst upon improving the recovery of fines by increasing the probability of collision between air bubbles and mineral particles: This has resulted in the development of new/modified flotation methods for enhanced recovery from fines. Several other flotation techniques have been attempted for improving the performance during flotation of fines. The paper briefly discusses the effects of particle size on flotation. The various fine particle flotation processes have been classified based upon their mechanisms. An attempt has been made to put together the various methods of fine particles flotation and critically analyse and discuss the developments in this area with a reference to author's own work on flotation of fines.