Kor, Matin,2025-12-172025-12-172016https://hdl.handle.net/11541.2/123159english1 ethesis (154 pages) :illustrations (some colour).Includes bibliographical references.The selective adsorption of chemicals from solution onto mineral surfaces is veryi mportant since the phenomenon is central to many aspects of mineral processing,ranging from particle dispersion to selective separation of minerals in flotation.However, many chemicals used in the mineral processing industry have questionable environmental impact and present risks to human health. There is a need to replace such chemicals with benign effective replacements. Natural polysaccharides are one suchclass of benign chemical, which are currently used to prevent the recovery of some hydrophobic unwanted (gangue) minerals. However, there are some separations that remain intractable with benign polysaccharide polymers (for example copper molybdenum separation). This project aims to enlarge our understanding of how these benign polymers function, so that insights can be gained that could lead to their deployment in separations that currently cannot be performed without the use of hazardous chemicals.enFlotation reagentsPolysaccharidesSurface chemistry.thesis