Chalcopyrite is the major and most abundant commercialsource of copper [1]. It is often accompanied with pyrite, whichis the most widespread naturally occurring metal sulfides. Thefloatability of pyrite is quite similar to chalcopyrite [2,3]. Pyritein copper concentrates will not only lower their quality butalso increase the economic and environmental costs in thesubsequent smelting process [4]. The collecting ability of tra-ditional sulfides collectors is very strong but their selectivity∗Corresponding author.E-mail: zhongh@mail.csu.edu.cn (H. Zhong).is poor; thus, usually the ideal copper–sulfur separation couldnot be realized by these collectors. The copper released fromchalcopyrite will activate pyrite and increase the difficulty forthe separation of chalcopyrite and pyrite as well [5,6]. Thereare five common copper–sulfur separation processes, whichare known as high pH process, inorganic inhibitors process,organic inhibitors process, electrochemical controlling pro-cess and cyanide process [7]. High pH value process is themost widely used process [8,9]. Even though this process couldget prefect flotation and separation result, a large amount oflime must be consumed and the recovery and grade of copper