In order to avoid the problems of low recovery in the flotation, the waste of resources and environmental pollution caused by discard, the flotation was adopted in the treatment of tailing after flotation sulphide mineral from Ni-Mo ore on the basis of mineralogical analysis. The proper flotation route was proposed based on open experiments on closed-circuit test. The method of molecular dynamics simulation was used to study the adsorption process of the collector on molybdenum oxide and apatite, providing a fundamental understanding of the flotation mechanism. The results show that the primary molybdenum mineral is molybdenum oxide in tailing after flotation sulphide mineral from Ni-Mo ore, while the main gangue is apatite. Content is obtained with Mo, Ni grades of 3.37% and 3.75%, respectively, and the respective recoveries of 71.22% and 67.81% by a flotation closed-circuit process. The collector is easier to be adsorbed on the surface of molybdenum oxide (100) than on that of apatite(010) and pyrite(110), which leads to the flotation separation of molybdenum oxide and the gangue minerals in tailing after flotation sulphide mineral from Ni-Mo ore. ©, 2014, Central South University of Technology. All right reserved.
