TITLE:

MODELING OF FLOTATION KINETICS BASED ON RATE DISTRIBUTION (No. 10)

DATE:

Friday, February 21st, 2003

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Mikhail Burstein, SIMS/R, San Diego State University

ABSTRACT:

Flotation is one of the most widely used separation processes for mineral processing, coal preparation, waste water treatment and other applications. For example, over 90% of base metal ores undergo flotation separation prior to smelting or leaching. The process is based on the difference in particle hydrophobic properties indicated by various attachment probabilities when approaching air bubble surface and also by stability of forming bubble/particle aggregates during their transport into the forth layer and further to the concentrate launder.

Flotation is similar to separation mass transfer processes widely used in chemical engineering, but it has several features complicating its quantitative description. One of them is continuous distribution of mineral particles by the attachment probability; therefore, kinetic constant of the process is a distributed parameter. Determining of the distribution based on kinetic data (assuming first-order kinetics of “free” flotation), leads to Fredholm integral equation of first kind with exponential kernel. Its solution is a kind of “incorrect problems” as it is unstable to small changes of the left side. If type of the solution function is not pre-set, the regularization technique can be used. Approaches to the modeling of flotation circuit including several stages with multiple recycles and preparation operations leading to deformation of floatability distribution are also discussed as well as the influence of flotation hydrodynamics on the process results.

HOST:

Jose Castillo

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