EcoFlot. Scape-up and Demonstration of the CoarseAir Flotation Technology

“EcoFlot. Scale-up and Demonstration of the CoarseAir Flotation Technology - Froth flotation is the most widely used separation technology for separating different minerals from one another in order to increase the grade (purity) of mineral ores and to produce a concentrate. The grade of the metal of the metal in this concentrate must be high enough that the material can be economically smelted in order to produce the metal.

A significant challenge with froth flotation is that ore particles need to be ground very fine for current flotation cell designs to work optimally. The energy required for this grinding is typically the biggest single energy cost in mining and minerals processing, thus representing both a significant economic and environmental cost. If flotation could be done at coarser particle sizes it would therefore result in significant energy savings.

The aim of this project is therefore to support the development of a novel coarse particle flotation cell design from a lab scale test unit to full industrial scale application.

This project has a number of academic and industrial partner organisations working on various aspects, but the contribution of Imperial College to this project will be through the modelling and simulation of these cells. In the first stage of the project we will use data from the lab scale cell to improve and extend the simulation software that we have develop for fluid flow and associated particle transport, as well as to validate the simulator’s performance.

As the models that we will be using are directly based on the physics of these systems, confidence gained in the simulator’s ability to model the lab scale unit will translate into confidence in the simulator’s ability to predict the performance of pilot and, ultimately, full scale versions of this novel cell.

This simulator will then allow us to evaluate the performance of different design modifications and associated operating conditions without the need for expensive fabrication and experimental testing. This will mean that only the most promising designs and sets of operating conditions will need to be experimentally tested, saving both costs and time.

The results from these tests, together with any discrepancies observed between the predicted and actual performance will allow us to further improve our simulator’s performance, especially as we increase the scale of the machines being designed and tested from the pilot scale up to commercial scale units.”