THE EFFECT OF MINERALOGY PROPERTIES ON THE SELECTIVE FLOTATION OF ENARGITE FROM OTHER COPPER MINERALS Maedeh Tayebi-Khoramia, Emmanuel Manlapiga, Liza Forbesb, Dee Bradshawa a Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre, The University of Queensland, 40 Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland 4068, Australia b CSIRO Process Science and Engineering, Melbourne, Australia ABSTRACT Arsenic (As) is highly toxic inorganic pollutant, which causes human health and environmental problems in several parts of the world. The world demand for copper metal is continuously increasing, while high grade copper ore deposits are continuously depleting. As a result, ore bodies that are rich in copper-arsenic bearing minerals, with associated more complex ore mineralogy, are being increasingly processed. Enargite is a copper-arsenic bearing mineral with similar surface properties to common copper sulphide minerals, such as bornite, chalcocite and chalcopyrite. For this reason, it is highly problematic, as it makes the selective separations by flotation difficult. Recent research using model mineral systems by CSIRO has demonstrated promising results showing that it is possible to separate copper arsenic sulphides from copper sulphides using controlled potential flotation at laboratory scale; however, the selective removal of copper arsenic minerals in real ore systems is not well understood. Specifically, the effects of mineralogical properties such as liberation and mineralogical association on flotation separations have not yet been considered. This study seeks to investigate selective separations of enargite from other copper sulphide minerals using real ore in a batch flotation system. The objective of this study is to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of the floatability of arseniccopper minerals and how this is affected by mineralogical properties. The conditions to be considered will be the control of pulp red-ox potential to allow differential separation of enargite from other copper minerals. This will require the use of a special flotation cell designed to provide reproducible kinetic data and pulp chemistry control, followed by detailed mineralogical analyses of selected concentrates. The test procedure developed will be tested on an ore with contains enargite and other copper sulphide minerals. KEYWORDS Flotation, Arsenic, Enargite Separation, Copper Sulphide Minerals