Efficiency of Barite Flotation Reagents a Comparative Study

Abstract

Besides oil and gas, Algeria has important mineral resources which are a determining factor for the economic development of the country. Among these latter, barite is, for its specific properties, needed in big quantities in the oil industry as the major ingredient of drilling muds. Barite is also used as mineral filler, in barium chemistry (special glasses) and in the civil engineering and public works (heavy concretes). In order to answer the requirements of this use, barite ores have to be treated and the method here applied is flotation. Without this technique, there would be no mining industry as it is known it today. The present work concerns a long series of tests which allowed to specify the efficiency of various collectors (anionic and cationic) and modifiers (barium chloride, citric acid, potassium dichromate,…) during barite flotation. Besides the nature and consumption of the reagents, the influence of pH was also studied. After a comparative study of the various reagents used, the selected anionic collectors giving very good results were the sodium dodecylsulfate, petroleum sulfonate and sodium alkylsulfate Sulfopon T35. As for the cationic collector, Armac 18, a primary amine acetate, does not float barite and could be used in reverse flotation. The conclusions which were drawn in this work have been then verified on artificial binary and tertiary mixtures of pure minerals and on a barite ore. The best performance was reached with the use of Petronate L (1000 g/t; pH 6.5) for barite flotation, leading to the obtention of a barite concentrate with a 95.1% BaSO 4 grade answering the oil industry requirements.