Flotation processes are difficult to model at a fundamental level and at present automatic monitoring and control of industrial plants have met with limited success. In practice these processes are most often controlled by human operators who tend to assess the performance of the plant based on their own experience and other heuristic rules. As a result plants are usually not controlled optimal...

Graphite ore collected from Hunan province, south China was characterized by chemical analysis, X-ray diffraction, and optical microscopy. Rougher and multi-stage flotation tests using a mechanical flotation cell and a flotation column containing an additional centrifugal force field were carried out to promote its grade and economic value. In rougher flotation, both the mechanical flotation ce...

This paper interests to the properties of fault-tolerant control system with respect to reliability of components. The aim of this paper is to present the need of reliability analysis in fault-tolerant control design. The focus of our study is on the reconfigurability analysis of systems with actuator faults under reliability constraints. This analysis proves that control reconfigurability is a...

In the flotation process, the concentrate grade and the tailing grade are crucial technical indices which reflect the product quality and efficiency. There are strong nonlinearity and uncertainty in such technical indices dynamic behaviors, which can hardly be described using accurate mathematical model. The technical indices which cannot be measured online continuously vary with boundary condi...

In this work a novel cyclonic-static micro bubble flotation column, using hydraulic separator with a conventional flotation column, was developed to separate oil droplets from emulsions. The system integrated the cyclonic and laminar flow coalescence with the pipe flow coalescence. The effect of process parameters such as circulation pressure, aeration rate, feed volumetric flow rate and viscos...

The influence of conditioning on the flotation of pyrrhotite in the presence of chlorite was investigated through flotation tests, sedimentation tests, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The flotation results show that chlorite slimes dramatically impair the flotation of pyrrhotite. Sedimentation and flotation tests reveal that conditioning can effectively remove chlorite slim...

Flotation is an important part of coal preparation, and the flotation column is widely applied as efficient flotation equipment. This process is complex and affected by many factors, with the froth depth and reagent dosage being two of the most important and frequently manipulated variables. This paper proposes a new method of switching and optimizing control for the coal flotation process. A h...

The efficiency of mineral processing operations, i.e. concentrating raw ores for metal extraction, impacts significantly on the operating cost of the final metal products. First, valuable minerals are liberated from the ore matrix in a comminution circuit, comprised of grinding (e.g., ball mills) and classification (e.g. hydrocyclones) units. The liberated minerals are subsequently concentrated...

A laboratory flotation column equipped with Venturi aerators and an adjustable froth removal system was used to study the effect of calcium soap and a mixture of calcium soap/alkyl phenol ethoxylate surfactant on ink and fibres transfer during flotation de-inking of a 50% old newprint (ONP) / 50% old magazines (OMG) recovered papers mixture. Mass transport phenomena determining the yield of the...