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What happens to gangue minerals during copper flotation?
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copper processing
Molten copper being made into plates.
During the flotation process, the finely ground ore is mixed with water and specific reagents to create a slurry. While these reagents are designed to attract copper minerals to rising air bubbles, they do not attach to the waste materials, known as gangue.
As the copper-laden bubbles rise to the surface to form a concentrate, the gangue minerals remain in the flotation cell. These waste materials are subsequently discarded as tailings. To maximize efficiency, these tailings may be reground and subjected to a second round of flotation to recover any remaining copper.1