The role of synthetic minerals in determining the relative flotation behaviour of Platreef PGE tellurides and arsenides

The resolve to apply synthetic PGMs for flotation studies in this investigation was necessitated by the need to address the hypothesis that Pt tellurides and arsenide from the Platreef exhibit significantly different flotation behaviour. Isolating naturally occurring PGMs from an ore for this purpose would be impossible due to their rarity and microscopic sizes. Obtaining such PGMs from flotation concentrates which would be a lot easier was not favoured as the PGMs were required with their natural surface chemistry unaltered by flotation reagents. This study shows that synthetic PGMs can be used to simulate the flotation response trends of their natural equivalents. The synthetic PGMs were used to confirm that Pt tellurides produce better flotation response compared to Pt arsenide.