MOLECULAR DESIGN OF FLOTATION COLLECTORS: A RECENT PROGRESS
Guangyi Liu, Xianglin Yang, Hong Zhong
College of Chemistry and Chemical engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China
ABSTRACT
The selective adsorption of a flotation collector to a targeted mineral plays a key role in enhancing the
hydrophobicity of mineral particles for attaching air bubbles. The development of special flotation
collectors for recovery of valuable minerals from the refractory complex ores has been
an urgent demand
in recent years. The molecular design offers an indispensable approach to research and develop novel
flotation collectors which contains head group and tail chain in their molecular structure. The conditional
stability constant, molecular mechanics and dynamics, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR),
and first-principle theory, especially, density functional theory (DFT) have been adopted to build the
criteria for designing head group. Acyl thioureas and thionocarbamates, guanidines, aromatic and
heterocyclic
thiones,
double
head
group
collectors
such
as
Gemini,
diamines,
dithiourea,
dithionocarbamate, sulfydryl-oximido surfactants have recently been developed. In evaluation of tail chain,
hydrophilic-hydrophobic balance parameters such as CMC (critical micelle concentration), HLB
(hydrophile-lipophile balance number) and LogP (oil - water partition coefficient) have been extensively
adopted. Replacement of aryl tail with aliphatic tail, introduction of oxygen into the alkyl tail and addition
of trisiloxane to the tail terminal have been found to be effective approaches for adjusting
hydrophilic-hydrophobic balance of collectors. Furthermore, amide groups grafted to tail chain of a
collector have been proved to improve the hydrophobicity of mineral particles adsorbed the collector by
aligning neighboring collector species closer through intermolecular hydrogen bonds and weakening the
effect of water molecules on the interfacial tension of mineral particles. Based on the crucial review, some
comments and prospects for further investigation on molecular design of flotation collectors were also
presented in this paper.
KEYWORDS
Flotation collector, Molecular design, Head group, Tail chain, Criteria, Hydrophobicity

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 731 88830654, fax: +86 731 88879616; E-mail addresses: guangyiliu@csu.edu.cn
(Guangyi Liu).