Flotation

Flotation is a method of separating one mineral species from others present in a mixture based on its hydrophobic nature-either natural or induced on the surface-when pre-sent as a suspension in water along with gas bubbles. Because of the surface hydrophobicity the mineral part-icles gets attached to gas bubbles and get seperated due to buoyant forces. Mineral separation by flotation became a reality at the beginning of the century when the first plant to produce 80000 Lpy zinc concentrate came into existence in Australia. Since then, the technique has gain-ed industrial importance at a rapid stride and today no less than 33 minerals, involving two billion tonnes or ore, are recovered all over the world and the information available in literature holds promise to many more. The reasons for such a widely acclaimed success are the flexi-bility of the process to suit a given system and its appli-cability to finer sizes. In fact, theoritically, any two given mineral system can be seperated by flotation by suitably manipulating conditions.