Laboratory Column flotation studies for reduction of alumina and silica in iron ore slimes of an operating plant

A typical iron ore washing plant for treating iron ore fines (<10 mm) consist of sizing of the ore by dry / wet screening, washing, classification by screw classifiers followed by single or multi-stage hydrocycloning of screw classifiers overflow. The underflow of the hydrocyclones forms the concentrate which is suitable for pellets making. Since the cut-point of hydrocyclones is usually at 20 µm or less, relatively lower diameter cyclones in a cluster with parallel feeding are used. This is found to, often, result in choking of the spigots, at times, by extraneous material reporting along with the slurry. It is observed to lead to sub-optimum performance of the cyclones with loss of iron values into cyclone overflow and thereafter into tailings. Analysis of the data of an operating beneficiation plant (Beneficiation plant - 1) of M/s Jindal South West (JSW) Steel Limited, Karnataka, India over a period of one year indicated that weight recovery of the concentrate from two-stage hydrocycloning was 45.9% (with respect to feed to the cyclones) and assaying 63.43% Fe, 4.43% SiO2 and 2.23% Al2O3. Considering the fineness of the slimes (d80: 40.5 µm), generated as screw classifier overflow, flotation is thought to be better alternative vis-à-vis hydrocyclones to recover iron values from it. The present study aims at improving the recovery of the iron values from the screw classifier overflow by adopting reverse cationic column flotation technology. After selecting a suitable collector, process parameters like collector and depressant dosages are optimized by statistically designed experiments on a Denver D12 flotation cell. Later, the effect of important operating parameters of flotation column like air flow-rate, froth depth and wash water on the separation process is studied and optimized. It was established that a typical screw classifier overflow analyzing 60.43% Fe, 6.88% SiO2 and 3.26% Al2O3 could be improved to 63.30% Fe, 4.04% SiO2 and 2.32% Al2O3 with 59.10% weight and 61.70% Fe recovery. This is an improvement of 29% in weight recovery of the concentrate at equivalent metallurgy compared to what is being obtained, by two-stage cycloning

Flotation Studies on Low Grade Magnesite Deposits from Sujikonda near Daroji Bellary district, Karnataka State

Magnesite, an important basic refractory raw material, has been in short supply in recent years. To find an alte-rnative to high costlow boron containing sea water magne-site, users have been looking more towards sources of a natural magnesite. Magnesite ( MgCO3 ) is commonly found in granular, compact earthy masses occurring as amorphous or crystalline deposits. The amorphous type of deposits are the most common variety found as veins in serpentine rocks. The low grade ores produced do not meet the chemical purity required by the consuming industries (Table-1). The low grade ores have to be upgraded by physical benefi-ciation methods to render them usable, besides, conserving high grade reserves of magnesite. in view of the proposed Vijayanagara steel plant in Toranagallu, the occurrence of Sujikonda magnesite deposit close to the steel plant attains greater significance. The magnesite deposit of Sujikonda area is of low grade with MgO = 29:60 wt.% ; Ca0 = 5.61 wt. %; Si02 = 3.84 wt. %; and R2 03 = 31.04 wt. %. In the present investigation the authors carried out experiments to understand the flotation behaviour of low grade magnesite

Collider Signature of Bulk Neutrinos in Large Extra Dimensions

We consider the collider signature of right-handed neutrinos propagating in $\delta$ (large) extra dimensions, and interacting with Standard Model fields only through a Yukawa coupling to the left-handed neutrino and the Higgs boson. These theories are attractive as they can explain the smallness of the neutrino mass, as has already been shown. We show that if $\delta$ is bigger than two, it can result in an enhancement in the production rate of the Higgs boson, decaying either invisibly or to a $b$ anti-$b$ quark pair, associated with an isolated high $p_T$ charged lepton and missing transverse energy at future hadron colliders, such as the LHC. The enhancement is due to the large number of Kaluza-Klein neutrinos produced in the final state. The observation of the signal event would provide an opportunity to distinguish between the normal and inverted neutrino mass hierarchies, and to determine the absolute scale of neutrino masses by measuring the asymmetry of the observed event numbers in the electron and muon channels.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures. v2: Added discussion on PDF uncertainties, added reference

Sfermion masses in the supersymmetric economical 3-3-1 model

Sfermion masses and eigenstates in the supersymmetric economical 3-3-1 model are studied. By lepton number conservation, the exotic squarks and superpartners of ordinary quarks are decoupled. Due to the fact that in the 3-3-1 models, one generation of quarks behaves differently from other two, by R-parity conservation, the mass mixing matrix of the squarks in this model are smaller than that in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). Assuming substantial mixing in pairs of highest flavours, we are able to get mass spectrum and eigenstates of all the sfermions. In the effective approximation, the slepton mass splittings in the first two generations, are consistent with those in the MSSM, namely: m^2_{\tilde{l}_L} - m^2_{\tilde{\nu}_{l L}} = m_W^2 \cos 2\ga $(l=e, \mu)$. In addition, within the above effective limit, there exists degeneracy among sneutrinos in each multiplet: $m^2_{\tilde{\nu}_{l L}} = m^2_{\tilde{\nu}_{l R}}$. In contradiction to the MSSM, the squark mass splittings are different for each generation and not to be m_W^2 \cos 2\ga.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures, Revised version in which D-term and F-term contributions are slightly change

Salinity Measurements Collected by Fishermen Reveal a “River in the Sea” Flowing Along the Eastern Coast of India

Being the only tropical ocean bounded by a continent to the north, the Indian Ocean is home to the most powerful monsoon system on Earth. Monsoonal rains and winds induce huge river discharges and strong coastal currents in the northern Bay of Bengal. To date, the paucity of salinity data has prevented a thorough description of the spreading of this freshwater into the bay. The potential impact of the salinity on cyclones and regional climate in the Bay of Bengal is, however, a strong incentive for a better description of the water cycle in this region. Since May 2005, the National Institute of Oceanography conducts a program in which fishermen collect seawater samples in knee-deep water at eight stations along the Indian coastline every 5 days. Comparison with open-ocean samples shows that this cost-effective sampling strategy is representative of offshore salinity evolution. This new dataset reveals a salinity drop exceeding 10 g kg−1 in the northern part of the bay at the end of the summer monsoon. This freshening signal propagates southward in a narrow (~100 km wide) strip along the eastern coast of India, and reaches its southern tip after 2.5 months. Satellite-derived alongshore-current data shows that the southward propagation of this “river in the sea” is consistent with transport by seasonal coastal currents, while other processes are responsible for the ensuing erosion of this coastal freshening. This simple procedure of coastal seawater samples collection could further be used to monitor phytoplankton concentration, bacterial content, and isotopic composition of seawater along the Indian coastlin

Non-thermal right-handed sneutrino dark matter and the Omega_DM/Omega_b problem

We argue that the superpartner of the Dirac right-handed neutrino is a prime candidate for dark matter created from a 'mattergenesis' mechanism. We show that due to the smallness of the Yukawa couplings, a right-handed sneutrino density created in the early Universe would not be erased by annihilations, which remain out of thermal equilibrium. It would also not be drowned by a later, additional production of right-handed sneutrinos, as the relic density of the non-thermal right-handed sneutrinos is found to be generally negligible compared to the observed dark matter density. Mild constraints on sneutrino masses and trilinear SUSY-breaking couplings are obtained. Possible mattergenesis scenarios are also mentionedComment: 11 pages, 2 figures, 2 typos added, 1 reference added, minor corrections in section

Top Partner Discovery in the T→tZT\to tZ channel at the LHC

In this paper we study the discovery potential of the LHC run II for heavy vector-like top quarks in the decay channel to a top and a $Z$ boson. Despite the usually smaller branching ratio compared to charged-current decays, this channel is rather clean and allows for a complete mass reconstruction of the heavy top. The latter is achieved in the leptonic decay channel of the $Z$ boson and in the fully hadronic top channel using boosted jet and jet substructure techniques. To be as model-independent as possible, a simplified model approach with only two free parameters has been applied. The results are presented in terms of parameter space regions for $3\sigma$ evidence or $5\sigma$ discovery for such new states in that channel.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, version 2 updated to JHEP 01 (2015) 08

Interferometric imaging with the 32 element Murchison Wide-field Array

The Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) is a low frequency radio telescope, currently under construction, intended to search for the spectral signature of the epoch of re-ionisation (EOR) and to probe the structure of the solar corona. Sited in Western Australia, the full MWA will comprise 8192 dipoles grouped into 512 tiles, and be capable of imaging the sky south of 40 degree declination, from 80 MHz to 300 MHz with an instantaneous field of view that is tens of degrees wide and a resolution of a few arcminutes. A 32-station prototype of the MWA has been recently commissioned and a set of observations taken that exercise the whole acquisition and processing pipeline. We present Stokes I, Q, and U images from two ~4 hour integrations of a field 20 degrees wide centered on Pictoris A. These images demonstrate the capacity and stability of a real-time calibration and imaging technique employing the weighted addition of warped snapshots to counter extreme wide field imaging distortions.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. This is the draft before journal typesetting corrections and proofs so does contain formatting and journal style errors, also has with lower quality figures for space requirement