Short-cut method for flotation rates modelling of industrial flotation banks

The knowledge of the distributed performance of a flotation bank, consisting of a number of cells in series, is a key factor for different purposes such as process design, scale-up, diagnosis, operation, control and optimization. A common practice in plant operation is to develop mass balances around the whole flotation bank in order to characterize the overall recovery, typically in rougher flotation. However, testing to fit flotation rate models are seldom developed on industrial flotation banks because they are high consumers of human labor during sampling, mineral samples preparation and chemical analysis development. In this paper a short-cut method is proposed which allows obtaining the relevant information for flotation rate modeling in a flotation bank with minimum effort and cost, and within a reasonable accuracy (less than 1–2% error in estimating cell recovery along the bank). The procedure considers two mass balances, one around the first cell of the bank and the second is the overall mass balance around the whole flotation bank, with a total of only 5 sampling streams. Examples developed in four rougher flotation banks located in three industrial concentrators illustrate the merit of this procedure.