Froth flotation not as popular

Flotation plants in the United States appear to be on the decline, the Bureau of Mines, U.S. department of the interior, reports.

Every five years the bureau conducts a survey of domestic mineral processing plants which use froth flotation, and according to the latest statistics, there has been an “over-all deline, since 1980, in the number, capacity, throughput and reagent consumption of domestic flotation plants, particularly those processing copper, lead and zinc sulphide ores.”

The bureau found that in 1985, 80 million tons of mineral concentrates were produced by froth flotation from 422 million short tons of ore and raw coal. In order to produce those 80 million tons, almost eight billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, 947 billion gallons of water and 1.4 billion pounds of chemical reagents were required.