Flotation is one of the main concentration processes and has been employed for many kinds of minerals (sulphides, oxides, silicates, phosphates, etc), and also for different particle sizes. Early studies showed that flotation can be successfully performed for particle sizes from 10 to 300µm. Flotation selectivity becomes very low outside these size limits, because the hydrodynamic conditions can´t maintain the ideal flotability levelfor the particles. Different particle sizes are found in the present-day flotation machines, which can reduce the process selectivity due to their different behaviors. This work aimed to evaluate the laboratory flotation studies of three particle sizes (-150µm, -150+45µm and -45µm) of an itabirite iron ore under different conditions of pH, reagent dosage, and conditioning rotation. The obtained results show that these size fractions have different behaviors in the flotation process, indicating that it is possible to increase the mass recovery and the selectivity when these fractions are separately flotted.
Size; flotation; selectivity
