Designing flotation plants in the 21st century

摘要

A proposed new procedure for designing flotationplants is described. This methodology can be used to predict theperformance of a fill scale flotation plant based onmeasurements conducted using a specially designed andinstrumented pilot-scale floatability characterisation test rig.This procedure can also be used to predict the performance of anew set of flotation machines for an existing plant. Theprocedure is based on a relationship between measuredparameters, namely flotation rate and the bubble surface areaflux. This relationship has been shown to scale upexperimentally from the pilot scale cells to currently availableindustrial scale mechanical flotation cells.