Abstract: At present, the common flotation methods of smithsonite are sulfide-flotation, direct flotation and other collector flotation methods. However, smithsonite has the characteristics of fine disseminated particle size, complex structure and serious sliming, which leads to some problems in the above flotation processes. In order to solve these problems, beneficiation workers have done a lot of research on the mechanism of flotation reagents. Therefore, this paper takes sulfide-flotation method, direct flotation method and other collector flotation methods as the starting point. Heating-enhanced vulcanization, reagent-enhanced vulcanization and activation in vulcanization-xanthate flotation method; Inhibiting effect of reagents and strengthening collecting effect of mixed reagents in sulfide-amine flotation method; Direct flotation of fatty acids; The action mechanism of reagents used in flotation processes such as chelating agent direct flotation method and new collector direct flotation method is reviewed.