froth flotation is an important component of mineral processing, and its process can be divided into the following sub-processes:

1. Through the interaction of suspended mineral particles and flotation reagents, the surface of the target mineral becomes hydrophobic, while non-target minerals become hydrophilic.

2. Bubbles are generated in the slurry and uniformly dispersed, ensuring good contact with the mineral particles.

3. The slurry is brought into a turbulent state to ensure uniform suspension of mineral particles within the flotation tank.

4. Mineral particles adhere to the bubbles, forming mineralized bubbles.

5. Mineral bubbles continuously rise to the surface, forming a foam layer. Within this foam layer, bubbles continuously burst and dehydrate, removing some of the entrained hydrophilic mineral particles, thus increasing the concentrate grade—a process known as “secondary enrichment.”

6. The foam is skimmed off to obtain a frothy concentrate.

Of the six sub-processes described above, the first process primarily occurs in the stirred tank. However, these processes occur continuously; due to insufficient mixing in the stirred tank, all six sub-processes occur within the flotation machine.

Mechanically agitated flotation machines rely on an agitator to suspend and aerate the slurry, dispersing the air into tiny bubbles. The agitator is located at the bottom of the tank and completes the six processes mentioned above from bottom to top along the tank’s height.

Foam formation and composition: Foam consists of numerous bubbles separated by extremely thin liquid films. When gas foams in an aqueous solution containing surfactants, the surfactant powder in the solution immediately arranges itself into a monomolecular film on the bubble surface. Under certain circumstances, bubbles can also escape from the surface. At this time, a monomolecular film with the completely opposite molecular arrangement is formed on the outer layer of the water film on the bubble surface, thus constituting a more stable bilayer bubble body, forming a near-spherical individual bubble in the gas phase space. Many bubbles aggregate into spherical bubble aggregates of different sizes, and more aggregates gather together to form foam.