Designing Paste Thickeners for Copper Flotation Tailings, Using Bed depth Scale-up Factor

Aim:The paste thickener could increase the water recovery and reduce the environmental impacts in tailings dam. The present work aimed to find the appropriate scale-up factor for bed depth to design paste thickener for copper tailings, using a lab glass cylinder and an operating pilot column. The thickening tests were carried out on the flotation tailing samples obtained from the Sarcheshmeh and Miduk copper mines located in Iran. Based on the industrial conditions, the values of influential parameters for paste thickener used in these experiments were pH=11 and feed solid=10 %. Flocculant type was NF43U and used as 25g/t with dosage of 0.25 gt. The unit area of Sarcheshmeh and Miduk paste thickeners were designed as 0.057 and 0.047m2/t/day, respectively. Based on the dry feed rates to each paste thickener as 7920 and 4320 t/day, the thickener's diameters were determined as 23.9 and 16.1 meters which are similar to the actual thickener’s diameters (24 and 16 meters), respectively. In addition to unit area, the bed depth is also important in the paste thickeners design. Hence, the ratio of industrial to lab unit bed volume for Sarcheshmeh paste thickener was obtained 75 which was equal to the ratio of industrial to lab bed depth (bed depth scale-up factor exclusively for copper flotation tailings). This procedure was validated by using the Miduk sample. The bed depth in the paste thickeners was determined as 7.5 meters, by using the bed depth scale-up factor which was comparable to the actual bed depth (8 meters). This research confirmed that the bed depth scale-up factor is able to correctly determine the bed depth of industrial paste thickeners for copper tailings.

Effects of Conventional Flotation Frothers on the Population of Mesophilic Microorganisms in Different Cultures

peer reviewedBioleaching is an environment-friendly and low-investment process for the extraction of metals from flotation concentrate. Surfactants such as collectors and frothers are widely used in the flotation process. These chemical reagents may have inhibitory effects on the activity of microorganisms through a bioleaching process; however, there is no report indicating influences of reagents on the activity of microorganisms in the mixed culture which is mostly used in the industry. In this investigation, influences of typical flotation frothers (methyl isobutyl carbinol and pine oil) in different concentrations (0.01, 0.10, and 1.00 g/L) were examined on activates of bacteria in the mesophilic mixed culture (Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, Leptospirillum ferrooxidans, and Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans). For comparison purposes, experiments were repeated by pure cultures of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans and Leptospirillum ferrooxidans in the same conditions. Results indicated that increasing the dosage of frothers has a negative correlation with bacteria activities while the mixed culture showed a lower sensitivity to the toxicity of these frothers in comparison with examined pure cultures. Outcomes showed the toxicity of Pine oil is lower than methyl isobutyl carbinol (MIBC). These results can be used for designing flotation separation procedures and to produce cleaner products for bio extraction of metals

Optimizing Flotation Circuit Recovery by Effective Stage Arrangements: A Case Study

Recovery is one of the most important metallurgical parameters in designing and evaluating flotation circuits. The present study used the recovery arrangement for two and three stage circuits to evaluate the effect of stage recovery on the overall circuit recovery and flotation circuit configuration. The results showed that mainly the highest recovery value should be assigned to the rougher stage in order to achieve the maximum overall circuit recovery. Countercurrent rougher-cleaner and rougher-scavenger circuits, in which recycling streams step back one stage at a time, follow a general rule for the assignment of recovery. Finally, a flotation plant containing six flotation banks was examined as a case study. A program for calculating total circuit recovery, for all possible combinations of recovery was developed in MATLAB software. 720 recovery combinations were evaluated. The results showed that optimal recovery allocation in stages could be effective in achieving overall circuit recovery. It was shown that the use of a large number of stages in some of the flotation circuits leads to the loss of equipment and additional costs. The proposed approach can be employed as an effective tool for designing and optimizing various flotation circuits and their operational parameters

The Effects of Ore Properties on the Characterization of Suspension in Settling and Compression

Many studies have considered the effects of suspension properties on the dewatering process but fewhave focused on ore properties. Thus, the present work studied the effects of ore properties (density,particle size, mineralogy) on the dewatering process based on lab and pilot experiments. A hydrocyclonewas used to prepare the required samples for the experiments. To study the effects of mineralogicalproperties, the sedimentation behaviour of hydrocyclone feed and underflow samples were compared. Itwas observed that the free-settling velocity of feed (2 to 6mm/sec) was less than in the underflow sample(2 to 7mm/sec) and the final concentration of underflow sample (0.45 to 0.48t/m3) was more than thefeed sample (0.44 to 0.47t/m3). Additionally, to study the effects of particle size and density, thesedimentation behaviour of hydrocyclone overflow and feed samples were compared. The settlingvelocity and final concentration of overflow sample were obtained at 0.15 to 0.4mm/sec and 0.32t/m3,respectively, which was significantly less than the feed sample. This was due to the amount of clayreduction in the underflow sample and particle size and density reduction in the overflow sample.Following on, the pilot experiments were carried out. It was observed that the bed formation of the feedsample tended to overflow in the sample at low flux (10t/m2/day) and tended to underflow in the sampleat high flux (28.5t/m2/day). This meant that the long time at lower flux created an opportunity for fineparticles to settle easily, similar to coarser particles and as such, ore properties did not play a decisiverole in bed formation, but their effects appeared instead at higher flux. Furthermore, it was observed thatthe underflow concentration increased by decreasing the flux from 28.5 to 10t/m2/day. These increasingamounts were 0.05t/m3 and 0.12t/m3 in hydrocyclone overflow and underflow samples, respectively, at aheight of 2.5 metres. This meant that the compressibility and permeability of the hydrocycloneunderflow sample was much better than in the hydrocyclone overflow sample, which was clearly a resultof the ore properties (density, particle size, mineralogy)

A New Experimental Approach to Improve the Quality of Low Grade Silica; The Combination of Indirect Ultrasound Irradiation with Reverse Flotation and Magnetic Separation

Removal of iron impurities in silica is one of the most important issues in the glass industry. The most noted impurities are surface coating and staining on silica particles; additionally, some cases of inclusions are observed. The prepared silica sample, for this research work, mostly was in the size range of 106–425 µm. Mineralogical studies indicated the existence of goethite, hematite, limonite and pyrite as the major iron impurities. The poor liberation degree of silica particles from clays encouraged the use of ultrasound irradiation to improve the efficiency of reverse flotation. The head sample contained 96.98% SiO2, 0.143% Fe2O3, 1.52% Al2O3, and 0.088% TiO2; Fe2O3 had to be reduced to below 0.04%. The reverse flotation tests were carried out with and without indirect ultrasound irradiation. The lowest Fe2O3 grade of the flotation yield was 0.058% and this was achieved using 2000 g/t of C4 collector with 15 min conditioning at neutral pH. C4 consisted of Aero 801, Aero 825, oleic acid and sodium oleate at equal dosage. As a result, a flowsheet was developed to include indirect ultrasound irradiation with reverse flotation and two stages of dry high intensity magnetic separation. In conclusion, the best product contained 98.43% SiO2, 0.034% Fe2O3, 0.90% Al2O3 and 0.051% TiO2

Effects of nanobubble and hydrodynamic parameters on coarse quartz flotation

Quartz, the second most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust, is a gangue mineral in practically every flotation process. Coarse quartz flotation has been a long standing problem in various mineral processing plants to reduce milling cost and increase valuable mineral recovery. Based on this, the effects of nanobubbles (NBs) and hydrodynamic parameters on coarse quartz particle flotation were systematically investigated. Mechanical flotation experiments were carried out using the 7 cm and 9 cm diameter impellers in order to produce different hydrodynamic conditions. 900–1300 rpm impeller speeds were used for the 7 cm diameter impeller and 554–786 rpm for the 9 cm diameter impeller. The results show that the presence of NBs increased the flotation recovery of −425 + 106 μm quartz by up to 21%. For the 7 cm diameter impeller, the maximum flotation recoveries of 86.4% and 98% were obtained in the absence and presence of NBs at Reynolds number (Re) of 81,000 and 66,000, respectively. For the 9 cm diameter impeller, the maximum recoveries of 86.3% and 97.5% were obtained in the absence and presence of NBs at Re of 90,000 and 75,000, respectively. NBs increased the flotation rate constant up to 36%. Keywords: Flotation, Nanobubbles, Coarse particle, Quartz, Hydrodynamic parameter

Coal Recycling from Tailings using Flotation with 2-Level Experimental Design Techniques

In this study, the possibility of producing coal with less than 11% ash from tailings of flotation process was investigated. The effect of six flotation parameters: collector type, collector consumption, frother type, frother consumption, pulp density and mixing rate were studied on a sample from a tailing dam. A software based experimental design approach (DX7) was applied to determine and model effective parameters as well as flotation optimization through fractional factorial. It was shown that collector type and flotation machine mixing rate were the most effective parameters on ash content of concentrate. The results indicated that the production of a desired ash content concentrate, i.e

Study of effective parameters on generating submicron (nano)-bubbles using the hydrodynamic cavitation

Although submicron (nano)-bubbles (NBs) have been broadly used in the laboratory flotation processes, the role of critical factors in their generation is not adequately explored in the literature. The present study investigates the effect of six key factors on generating submicron-sized bubbles and its application to coarse-sized quartz flotation. Interaction of influential factors is highlighted, which was generally overlooked in previous studies. These parameters i.e. frother type (MIBC and A65), frother dosage (50-130 mg/L), air flow rate (0.1-0.4 L/min), pressure in Venturi tube (250-400 kPa), liquid temperature (22-42 °C) and pH (6-10) were evaluated through software based statistical fractional factorial design. The size distribution of NBs produced by the principle of hydrodynamic cavitation was measured using a laser particle size analyzer (LPSA), and Sauter mean bubble diameter (d32) was considered as the response of experimental design. Batch flotation experiments were performed with and without the A65 and MIBC-NBs. The results of experimental design showed that relative intensity of the main factors followed the order of air flow rate>temperature>frother type as the most effective parameters on the bubble size. It was revealed that the lowest air flow rate (0.1 L/min) produced the smallest bubbles. Meanwhile, the d32 decreased as the liquid temperature increased, and the bubble size strongly was related to the frother type and its concentration. Indeed, with changing frother from MIBC to A65, the reduction in mean bubble size was two-fold. Interaction of frother type with its dosage, air flow rate and pressure were statistically recognized significant on the mean bubble size, which was confirmed by p-values. Finally, flotation recovery of quartz particles improved ca. 22% in the presence of NBs compared to the conventional flotation