Surfactants Influence on Sphalerite Wetting during Zinc Concentrate Pressure Leaching

This paper describes an investigation of the surfactant influence on zinc sulfide wetting and the pressure leaching of zinc concentrates. For this, a variety of anionic and cationic surfactants with different chemical structures were tested. The methodology for mineral preferential wettability determination via establishing correlation between the spreading coefficients was proposed. It allows determining the surfactant potential efficiency. The influence of contrastively functional reagents on zinc concentrate pressure leaching was reviewed. It is found that simultaneous usage of stabilizers and dispersing agents allows enhancing zinc extraction, eliminating pellet formation at lower reagent consumptions. The beneficial effect of surfactant mixture was seen through the increased zinc sulfide wetting by solution and colloid protection of sulfur particles via solvate-adsorption and structural factor of stabilization. The optimal composition of surfactant mixture was proposed and allowed to extract 95 % of zinc along with pellet formation elimination.