Minimum recovery zone height in flotation columns from particle-bubble collision analysis

摘要

A particle-bubble collision model is used to investigate the minimum recovery zone height, H_(r,min), required for flotation columns. The criterion that is used to define minimum recovery zone height is that height which gives unit collision probability. It is shown that H_(r,min) is determined by particle and bubble size, gas hold-up and bubble-bubble interaction. Under typical operating conditions, for flotation of particles <10 μm in size H_(r,min) is greater than 10 m, but it reduces to less than 1 m for particles >100 μm.