Column Flotation: Theory and Practice

Column flotation which employs a counter-current flow of slurry and air bubbles has proved to be better alternative to the conventional mechanical cells for separation of minerals. Because of the distince advantages of column flotation over mechanical cells, it is gaining wider acceptance in industry. Realizing the potentioal of column flotation, RRL Bhubaneswar also took initiative in the early ixties to develop column flotation technology for Indian ores. In the early stages, operation and design of columns wewe mainly based on experience. But with the increasing commercial installations, systematic investi-gations bave been carried out by several workers. In this paper an attempt is made to review the development of column flotation for concentration of law grade ores. The basic principles and applications of column flotation have been described. The salient results obtained at RRL, Bhubaneswar have been highlighted

Characterisation and Response to Beneficiation of Ferruginous Chromite Ores

Sukinda-Nausahi belt of Orissa, represent about 90% of the Indian Chromite ore reserves. These ores are later-itic type in nature resulted by weathering of ultrabasic rocks, Metallurgical industries consume maximum chromite ores- around 50% followed by refractory and chemical indu-stries which consume about 35% and 15% respectively. The utility pattern of chromite in industries is varying greatly. The variation in the demand could be due to lim-ited market for medium and low grade chromite. Hence it is necessary to improve the chromium content for better util-isation and conservation of available resources

Beneficiation of Thermal coal

About 110 million tonnes of non-coking coal is being mined every year out of which 32% is being used in thermal power plants. The quality of thermal coal is deteriorating day by day due to mechanised bulk mining, poor quality control and depletion of high quality coal seams. The properties and quality of impurities in coal are of major importance in the design and operation of steam generation equipment. The efficiency and longivity of thermal plants and equipment can be improved by using high quality coal. Increased demand for quality coal and environmental requi-rements necessitate beneficiation of thermal coal. Benefi-ciation will reduce the burden on transportation espec-ially when power plants are far off from the pit heads. An attempt is made in this paper to beneficiate Talcher thermal coal in order to reduce ash

Recovery of Coal fines from Rejects by Column Flotation

Investigations were carried out using column flotation to recover coking coal fines from the tailings generated at flotation plant of one of theoperating washeries. Columns of different diameter designed and developed by RRL, Bhubaneswar were used in these studies. Washabilitiy studies indicated that the tailings have the potential to yield 60% of clean coal at 15.0% ash level. Flotation studies in cell indicated thata product with 16% ash can be obtained at 50% yield from these tailings. Results of column flotation had indicated that the performance of column is superior to cell and close to washability data. Most of the coal values being rejected presently can be recovered by using theflotation column. The results obtained by 100 mm and 220 mm diameter laboratory columns could be reproduced on pilot column of 1000 mm diameter, confirming the validity of design and scale up criteria

Performance Evaluation of the Indigenous Commercial Flotation Columns for Zinc Cleaning at Rajpura Dariba Plant of HZL in Rajasthan

Hindustan Zinc limited operates a Pb-Zn beneficiation plant having a capacity of around 3000 tpd at Rajpura Dariba mine. The beneficiation circuit consists of 3 parallel streams each of 800 tpd capacity and produces lead and zinc concentrates. The ore from this mine is reported to be complex in nature. The sulphides of lead-zinc from this deposit are hosted by calc-silicate (CS) and graphite mica schist (GSM) rock types. The extreme variability of the physicochemical properties of the ore and wide variations in the grade of mill feed created metallurgical problems due to which the desired products could not be obtained on sustained basis

Characterisation and Beneficiation of some Indian Coal Fines

India's total coal reserves are estimated 1,12,000 MT which is around one per cent of world's total reserves. Out of these, coking coal deposits are about 23,400 MT, of which 10,800 MT are proved reserves. Due to the deficiency in coking coal and to meet the increasing requirement of actual industry about 1.5 MT of prime coking coal was imp- orted during 1983

Deuteron Structure and Form Factors: Using Inverse Potentials for S-waves

In this paper, we determine deuteron's static properties, low energy scattering parameters, total cross-section and form factors from inverse S-wave potentials constructed using Morse function. The scattering phase shifts (SPS) at different lab energies are determined using phase function method. The model parameters are optimised using both machine learning algorithm and traditional data analysis by choosing mean squared error as cost function. The mean absolute error between experimental and obtained SPS for states 3S1 and 1S0 are found to be 0.35 and 0.70 respectively. The low energy scattering parameters are matching well with expected values. The contribution due to S-waves SPS towards total cross-section at various energies have been obtained and are matching well with experimental values. The analytical ground state deuteron wave-function (DWF) is obtained by utilizing the experimental value for Quadrupole moment. Other static properties and form factors determined from obtained DWF are found to be in close agreement with experimental ones.Comment: 29 pages, 5 Figures, 8 Table