Abstract: Butyl xanthate has been used as copper collector in a copper mine in Shanxi province for a long time. Butyl xanthate has a strong pungent smell on the production site and the xanthate ion in benefication wastewater exceeds the standard. In order to solve the environmental problems of xanthate, Novel environmental collector CYL-5 was used to carry out for flotation experiment in the copper mine. Through the closed-circuit flotation process of one roughing, three cleanings and one scavengings, the copper concentrate with Cu grade of 25.13% and recovery of 93.30% was obtained. Compared with the flotation index of butyl xanthate, the grade of copper concentrate was increased by 2.06 percentage points and the copper recovery was increased by 0.50 percentage points using the collector CYL-5, which was better than butyl xanthate.