Investigation on the preparation of coal slime flotation microemulsion collector: A combination of experimental and simulation method

Microemulsion collector is a new type of highly efficient collector for coal slime flotation, but the research on their formulation is complexity and time-consuming, which restricts the development and application of the collector. In this work, an efficient method was designed for preparing microemulsion collectors through combined experiments and simulation. The dissipative particle dynamics simulation studies showed that CPE-12 was the surfactant for the preparation of microemulsion collector, and n-pentanol was the cosurfactant. And the Km value range was between 1.0 and 1.5. The experimental studies based on simulation showed that the Km value was 1.2 and the content of water was greater than 20%. The composition of the microemulsion collector was 22.91% CPE-12, 19.09% n-pentanol, 28.00% n-dodecane, and 30.00% water. The centrifugation and short-term storage experiments showed HB-MC has good stability for daily storage and transportation. The flotation test studies showed that, under the condition of similar ash content of clean coal, the yield of clean coal floated by the HB-MC was 1.42% higher than that of n-dodecane, and its dosage was 18.18% of that of n-dodecane. Moreover, the flotation of long flame coal slime using HB-MC without adding frother.