Biogeography, assembly processes and species coexistence patterns of microbial communities in metalloids-laden soils around mining and smelting sites.

Microbes are important component in terrestrial ecosystem, which are believed to play vital roles in biogeochemical cycles of metalloids in mining and smelting surroundings. Many studies on microbial diversity and structures have been investigated around mining and smelting sites, whereas the ecological processes and co-occurrence patterns that influence the biogeographic distributions of microbial communities is yet poorly understood. Herein, microbial biogeography, assembly mechanism and co-occurrence pattern around mining and smelting zone were systematically unraveled using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

Study on Parameters of a New Gas-Water Spray in Ore Pass Dedusting Based on Experiment and Numerical Simulation.

To solve the problem of ore unloading dust in ore pass crosscuts, the atomization characteristics of a new gas-water spray and the effect of the ore discharge airflow on the spray effect were studied by experiments, and the installation position of the spray nozzle in the crosscut was determined by numerical simulation. The results show that when the gas-water flow ratio is 100-150, the atomization effect is the best. In this situation, the droplet size can be less than 28 μm.

Investigation of the specularite/chlorite separation using chitosan as a novel depressant by direct flotation.

Chlorite is one of the representative iron-bearing silicates gangue minerals existed in the specularite ores which the traditional depressants are incapable of action in specularite/chlorite separation flotation. An attempt was conducted for the separation of specularite/chlorite with chitosan as a novel depressant through microflotation tests, Zeta potential measurements, adsorption tests, FT-IR, and XPS analysis. The microflotation results show that chitosan selectively depresses chlorite while specularite still keeps in high floatability.

Flotation separation of specularite from chlorite using propyl gallate as a collector.

Separation of specularite from iron-containing silicate iron ore is challenging due to the similar surface properties of minerals and gangues. In this work, propyl gallate (PG) was applied as a chelating collector to separate specularite from chlorite. The flotation results indicated that collector sodium oleate (NaOL) shows little selectivity for the separation of specularite and chlorite.