Ion flotation and its applications on concentration, recovery, and removal of metal ions from solutions

Many industries, especially mining and metallurgy, deal with solutions containing ions. In some cases, these metal ions need to be concentrated and recovered from solutions and sometimes removed from wastewater. The ion flotation method has been applied for wastewater and water treatment, recovery of precious and platinum group metals, preconcentrating of rare earth elements, selective separation of multicomponent ions from dilute solutions, and analytical chemistry. It has been employed to separate heavy metals from a liquid phase using bubble attachment, originated in mineral processing. In these cases, ion flotation has an important place among other methods because it is a cheap and practical method. In this study, many ion flotation studies, especially applied at laboratory scale, were reviewed. This method gives very successful and promising results in removing heavy metals with toxic effects from wastewater and selective separation of metal ions from very low concentrated solutions. Ion flotation may take place in industrial scale operations with the new developments in flotation machines and collectors with better selectivity, high efficiency, lower cost, and environmental friendliness.