Study on Optimization of Tungsten Ore Flotation Wastewater Treatment by Response Surface Method (RSM)

Abstract

A large amount of collectors, inhibitors and modifiers such as oleic acid, water glass and sodium carbonate are added to the flotation processing of tungsten ore, resulting in the difficulty of the suspended solids (SS) with the residual water glass settling down in the flotation wastewater. The removal efficiency of the suspended solids is low with commonly used reagents like polyaluminium chloride (PAC) and polyacrylamide (PAM). This paper innovatively applied calcium chloride (CaCl2) to treat flotation wastewater and optimized the dosage of CaCl2, PAM and the pH value. The experimental results showed that when the dosage of 595 mg/L CaCl2 was combined with 21 mg/L PAM at pH 12, the turbidity removal ratio could reach 99.98%, and the residual turbidity of the supernatant was 0.23 NTU. The effluent could fully meet the requirements for reuse in industrial, urban miscellaneous and scenic environment water consumption (turbidity < 5 NTU). The quadratic equation model fitted with Design-Expert 8.0.6 software was constructed as Y = 91.52 + 8.68A + 1.11B − 1.02C − 1.7AB + 0.86AC + 0.06BC − 1.56A2 + 2.09B2 − 1.89C2, which had a good accuracy of the predicted responses versus the experimental data.