Towards large scale microwave treatment of ores: Part 1 – Basis of design, construction and commissioning

Despite over thirty years of work, microwave pre-treatment processes for beneficiation of ores have not progressed much further than laboratory testing. In this paper we present a scaleable pilot-scale system for the microwave treatment of ores capable of operating at throughputs of up to 150tph. This has been achieved by confining the electric field produced from two 100kW generators operating at 896MHz in a gravity fed vertical flow system using circular choking structures yielding power densities of at least 6x108 W/m3 in the heated mineral phases. Measured S11 scattering parameters for a quartzite ore (-3.69±0.4dB) in the as-built applicator correlated well with the simulation (-3.25dB), thereby validating our design approach. We then show that by fully integrating the applicator with a materials handling system based on the concept of mass flow, we achieve a reliable, continuous process. The system was used to treat a range of porphyry copper ores

Trend-based analysis of a population model of the AKAP scaffold protein

We formalise a continuous-time Markov chain with multi-dimensional discrete state space model of the AKAP scaffold protein as a crosstalk mediator between two biochemical signalling pathways. The analysis by temporal properties of the AKAP model requires reasoning about whether the counts of individuals of the same type (species) are increasing or decreasing. For this purpose we propose the concept of stochastic trends based on formulating the probabilities of transitions that increase (resp. decrease) the counts of individuals of the same type, and express these probabilities as formulae such that the state space of the model is not altered. We define a number of stochastic trend formulae (e.g. weakly increasing, strictly increasing, weakly decreasing, etc.) and use them to extend the set of state formulae of Continuous Stochastic Logic. We show how stochastic trends can be implemented in a guarded-command style specification language for transition systems. We illustrate the application of stochastic trends with numerous small examples and then we analyse the AKAP model in order to characterise and show causality and pulsating behaviours in this biochemical system