It is widely accepted that mineral flotation is a very challenging control problem due to chaotic nature of process. This paper introduces a novel approach of combining multi-camera system and expert controllers to improve flotation performance. The system has been installed into the zinc circuit of Pyhäsalmi Mine (Finland). Long-term data analysis in fact shows that the new approach has improv...

Flotation deinking of old newsprint (ONP) using polydiallyldimethylammonium chloride (polyDADMAC) as the only deinking agent was studied. The results demonstrate that polyDADMAC can neutralize dissolved anionics to form small particles. These small particles, together with ink, filler, and fines, strongly adsorbed onto air bubble surfaces and functioned as particle foaming agents. Therefore, no...

The residence time of liquid and solid was determined in flotation banks of mechanical cells and flotation columns at Salvador Division, Codelco-Chile. The estimation was developed from residence time distribution (RTD) measurements using radioactive tracers. Results allowed the estimation of effective pulp volumes in flotation banks and columns. It was found that industrial flotation banks are...

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is actively engaged in external and internal research to ensure that deinkability of the current recycled paper streams is maintained as the percentage of digital prints in deinking mill furnish increases. As part of this effort HP is working to understand how ink and paper interactions for both inkjet and liquid electrophotography affect the flotation deinking process. Res...

The paper discusses two procedures of flotation of difficult-to-float oxidized coal. The first one is the normal flotation procedure which relies on wetting coal with water followed by addition of flotation reagents (dodecane, dodecyl tetraoxyethelene ether (C12E4), and 1-pentanol). The second, direct contact procedure consists of mixing pure reagents with dry coal followed by addition of water...

For predicting the key technology indicators (concentrate grade and tailings recovery rate) of flotation process, a feed-forward neural network (FNN) based soft-sensor model optimized by the hybrid algorithm combining particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and gravitational search algorithm (GSA) is proposed. Although GSA has better optimization capability, it has slow convergence velocity...