There is a worldwide trend of increasing the share of extraction and processing of low-grade minerals, but their extraction and processing volumes are still low. There are several reasons for this: high mining and transportation costs, imperfect techniques and technological difficulties in enrichment and processing of refractory and low-quality minerals. Due to the depletion of reserves of easily beneficiated raw materials and to compensate for the growing shortage of high-quality minerals, the Russian mining industry development strategy provides for the involvement of new and unconventional types of deposits into production. Examples of such deposits are deposits of carbonaceous raw materials (black shale, refractory sulphide carbon-bearing ores, impactites, etc.) containing carbon of varying degrees of metamorphism. On the basis of the most modern mineralogical, physical, nuclear and chemical methods of research of composition, structure and properties of the carbonaceous raw materials at the micro- and nanolevel, the composition of the productive mineral matter, physical, chemical and thermodynamic laws of separation of valuable mineral components and the basic technological processes to obtain the finished product for valorization of the unconventional carbonaceous mineral raw materials were determined with maximum reliability. One of the possible reasons of difficulty of beneficiation of carbonaceous raw materials is the fine phenocrysts in graphite which can be solved by using the flotation process. Contrast of surface properties of minerals with similar technological properties can be increased by application of different energy effects (MEMI, MIO, microwave, electrochemical treatment etc.) at successive stages of raw material transformation, regulation of pulp conditioning conditions (duration and intensity of agitation, heat treatment of pulp) as well as by development and application of selective reagent regimes. The special feature of flotation as a method of extraction of noble and rare metals is the ability to extract valuable metals not only in their native free form, but also in close association with sulphides and carbon. Flotation with the use of intensifying influences made it possible to transfereven low-sized structures of noble and rare metals, which are not extracted by conventional methods of cyanidation, gravitation enrichment and amalgamation, into the concentrate. One of the ways to increase the efficiency of the flotation process is preliminary modification of the additive which is introduced in addition to the main reagents of the sinter - “carrier material”.
Critical importance of pH and collector type on the flotation of sphalerite and galena from a low-grade lead–zinc ore