As water resources become scarcer and society’s
demands to reduce freshwater extraction have increased, mine sites have been
increasing water reuse and accessing multiple water sources for mineral
processing to save freshwater, particularly in froth flotation. Implementation
of either strategy may lead to water quality variation that may impact
flotation efficiency. In general, flotation is most effectively undertaken with
clean water. As a second preference, metallurgists seek a consistent water
quality so that reagent regimes for flotation can be developed and applied
consistently. Variation in water quality is undesirable because it could
complicate operating conditions and compromise flotation performance. This is
all discussed in an excellent review of the effect of water quality on
flotation, published in Minerals Engineering, by researchers at the Sustainable
Minerals Institute of the University of Queensland.
More and more flotation plants have to use groundwater,
sea water and recycle water with a high concentration of electrolytes. Despite
a number of studies that have been conducted to investigate the effect of
saline water on mineral flotation, effective ways to solve many problems
encountered in mineral flotation plants using saline water are not currently
available. Other University of Queensland researchers will present a review at
Flotation ’13 of published articles addressing the effect of saline water on
the interfacial phenomena taking place in the flotation process, such as
surface wettability, bubble-particle collision and attachment, mineral particle
interactions and frothing. They will provide an overall picture of current
status of studies in this area and pinpoint directions of future researches
addressing different problems associated with using saline water in mineral
flotation.
Flotation '13 is only seven weeks away now. The updated timetable can be viewed here, and the current list of delegates registered here.
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I like this article as I sometimes use different sources of water which could also be impacting the flotation process either negatively or positively. I am sure there is need for me to evaluate the impact of the quality of water now that you have mentioned this.
ReplyDeleteChawo Nkhoma, Concentrator Manager
My below article was published by Elsevier quite time ago. It is really nice to see its current validity :
ReplyDeleteOzkan S.G., Acar A., "Investigation Of Impact Of Water Type On Borate Ore Flotation", WATER RESEARCH, vol.38, no.7, pp.1773-1778, 2004
Safak Gokhan Ozkan, Turkey
Would anyone like to share impact of Water Quality in coal flotation through personal experiences /papers/reports/test works etc. ?
ReplyDeletePR RAY
recently did my phd on water quality http://pure.ltu.se/portal/sv/publications/process-water-geochemistry-and-interactions-with-magnetite-at-the-kiirunavaara-iron-mine-northern-sweden(571ce718-44ab-470d-ad4f-1c85ced55b58).html
ReplyDeleteKurniawan, A.U., Ozdemir, O., Nguyen, A.V., Ofori, P. and Firth, B., (2011). “Flotation of
ReplyDeletecoal particles in MgCl2, NaCl, and NaClO3 solutions in the absence and presence of
Dowfroth 250”, International Journal of Mineral Processing, 98(3-4), p.137-144. DOI: 10.1016/j.minpro.2010.11.003
Ofori, P., Firth, B., Franks, G., Nguyen, A.V. and Jameson, G., (2005). “Impact of Saline Water on Coal Flotation”, Report C13051, Australian Coal Association, Australia. http://www.acarp.com.au/abstracts.aspx?repId=C13051A
Wang, B., Peng, Y. and Vink, S., (2013). “Diagnosis of the Surface Chemistry Effects on Fine Coal Flotation Using Saline Water”, Energy Fuels, 27(8), p. 4869-4874. DOI: 10.1021/ef400909r
Peter Marteene, Metallurgical Plant Attendant, Xstrata Zinc
Please anyone cal share the use of saline water in phosphate flotation
ReplyDelete