Flotation reagents are the main factor in adjusting the floatability of minerals. Insufficient dosage will not achieve the desired adjustment, making mineral separation difficult; excessive dosage will also have the opposite effect, not only reducing concentrate quality and losing selectivity, but also causing waste. In fact, only a small amount of collector needs to be added in flotation to form a hydrophobic film on the mineral surface. Similarly, the amount of reagent needed to inhibit or activate a particular mineral is also very small. Therefore, in practical applications, special emphasis should be placed on “appropriate dosage” and “selectivity.”
Due to the different properties of different ores, the range of reagent dosage varies greatly. Even for ores of the same type, the reagent dosage will vary depending on the specific conditions of the deposit formation, the content of useful minerals and gangue, and so on. The general range is: collector dosage 20–1500 g/t. Generally, xanthate collectors are used in smaller quantities, approximately tens to over one hundred grams per ton of ore, while fatty acid collectors are used in larger quantities, approximately several hundred to over one kilogram per ton of ore. Frothing agents are used at 20–2000 g/t; activators at 200–1000 g/t; inhibitors at 100–200 g/t; and media modifiers at 500–3000 g/t. When separating specific ores, a narrower dosage range should be selected based on experimental results. In actual use, as long as the ore’s composition remains unchanged, the dosage of reagents should not be arbitrarily altered.