Selective adsorption behaviors and mechanisms of benzyl quaternary ammonium salt on quartz and gypsum: A combined experimental and theoretical study

Benzyl quaternary ammonium salt is an effective collector of quartz from gypsum. To investigate the selective collection mechanism of tetradecyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (TDBAC) for quartz from a microscopic view, the adsorption experiments, first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT), and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation were performed in this work. The adsorption experiment results show that the adsorption capacity of TDBAC on the quartz surface was 1.6 × 10−6 mol/m2, much larger than that on the gypsum surface (1.0 × 10−7 mol/m2). The interaction energy of TDBAC with quartz surface was −20202.98 kJ/mol, much smaller than that with gypsum surface (-78.37 kJ/mol). DFT calculation results indicate that the quartz surface was more likely to interact with TDBAC through electrostatic attraction since the average negative charge and exposure oxygen density of the quartz surface were both greater than those of the gypsum surface. After the adsorption of TDBAC, there were hydrogen bonds formed between the hydrogen atoms in TDBAC and the oxygen atoms on the quartz surface. This work confirmed that the highly selective adsorption of TDBAC on quartz surface was attributed to the strong electrostatic attraction and hydrogen-bond interaction. [Display omitted] •TDBAC had a higher adsorption capacity on quartz surface than that on gypsum surface.•The benzyl group of TDBAC enhanced the adsorption through hydrogen bonding.•The strong electronegativity of quartz strengthened the adsorption of TDBAC.