Bibliometric analysis on kaolinite flotation

Abstract The current work presents a bibliometric discussion on articles published worldwide concerning kaolinite flotation in international journals from 1992 to 2015. In total, 39 articles were selected from Elsevier's database, SciVerse ScienceDirect. This work allowed to recognize and identify which are the thematic and methodological trends that are being used, in addition to the main collectors used in kaolinite flotation. The results show that a significant amount of articles is produced by Chinese authors, especially from 2013, as China is the second highest aluminum producer in the world, and kaolinite is the reject in the reverse flotation process of diaspore. The results showed the difficulty of working with kaolinite flotation individually and confirmed that there is scientific collaboration among authors. Bibliometric analysis showed that the reagents used in kaolinite flotation tests are mostly derived from cationic nitrogenated compounds. Additionally, best recovery results from kaolinite flotation occurred in acidic media.