An investigation into the role of alkaline scrubbing in spodumene flotation using X-Ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure (XANES) spectroscopy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Spodumene is an important lithium aluminosilicate mineral in the battery supply chain found alongside other silicates with similar surface properties. It can be selectively concentrated by flotation using fatty acid collectors. Historic and modern research has shown how alkaline scrubbing improves spodumene flotation performance, however, its application is inconsistent. This study presents the first use of X-Ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure (XANES) Total Fluorescence Yield (FLY) spectra at the Li K-edge and Al L2,3 edge to evaluate sodium hydroxide treatments of four different spodumene samples. The findings confirmed the spodumene XANES spectra was consistent across all samples and suggested a continuous shift to lower energy occurred along the Li K-edge after alkaline scrubbing, in addition to potential cyclical shifts in peak energy along the Al L2,3 edge. Observed peak shifts were attributed to broken Al–O and Si–O bonds on the spodumene surface. Corresponding batch flotation results revealed selectivity and recovery were improved after scrubbing, with a greater observed improvement for a ‘weathered’ ore. This study demonstrates the potential use of XANES spectroscopy in lithium flotation research and provides further evidence that NaOH scrubbing is beneficial for spodumene flotation performance and should be considered as an integral part of spodumene flotation flowsheets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".