Flat covers in abelian and in non-abelian categories

A general existence theorem for flat covers in (e.g., quasi-abelian) locally finitely presented categories is obtained from an additive Ramsey type theorem. In the abelian case, it is shown that flat covers always exist. Applications to categories of separated presheaves or sheaves, localizations of Bousfield type, torsion-free classes of finite type, and categories of filtered objects or complexes, are given.