Flotation
Description
Froth Flotation is the dominating mineral beneficiation technique and has achieved great commercial success. However, its high process efficiency is often limited to a narrow particle size range of approximately 10–100 m. Considerable efforts have been made to extend this size range to the lower limit of a few microns, even submicrons, and the upper limit of 1–2 mm. To achieve that, the bubble size distribution (see example image for an inline bubble sizing with the SOPAT) in the Floatation cells needs to be controlled and optimized. The SOPAT inline systems allows the real time monitoring in the large scale industrial Floatation cell to enhance the performance in this most critical step in the entire ore processing workflow.
The SOPAT technology is based on photo-optic in-situ microscopy in combination with an automated image analysis package that is able to extract the relevant particle information from the image data.
Different probes are available to cover a measurement range from 1 to 10000 μm. For a certain anticipated particle size range, a specific probe is chosen to perform the measurement.
SOPAT probes are rubber or ceramic lined to be used inline despite heavy abrasion challenges.
SOPAT can measure in:
Liquid/liquid
Gas/liquid
Solid/liquid
Solid/gas
Gas/liquid/liquid
Gas/liquid/solid