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By V. Z. Kozin, E. A. Bekchurina, P. S. Volkov, Yu. P. Morozov, A. S. Komlev

"The current sampling systems of ore flows or concentrates are based on the method of cross sections in point sampling and the method of scooping in reducing. The limited number of point samples in sampling and microsamples in reducing lead to big random and probable systematic errors. The paper defines the principles of sampling, which assure the absence of systematic errors and also provides calculation formulas of probable errors in sampling methods of cross and longitudinal sections as well as in samples preparation. The article sets the fundamental laws of sampling: the dependency of minimal mass of gross sample and number of point samples from mass of point sample in sampling from heterogeneous body; the dependency of a sample minimal mass from lumps’ size in preparation of carefully mixed samples; the dependency of point samples’ dispersion from duration of control period. The paper introduces the fundamental notions: lump variance; probable systematic error; methodical error. It also provides a solution of outstanding sample correct application in analysis results calculations. In application of automatic analyzers, mounted in material flows, the probable error connected with sampling, is calculated by the formulas for carefully mixed sampling bodies. The paper describes the developed and introduced sampling systems on the base of combined application of cross and longitudinal sections methods in sampling and preparation of samples. The advantages of this equipment are compactness, reliability, simplicity in service and operation, and for pulps it is adaptability in pipelines. Application of the developed equipment entirely excludes probable systematic error. The new systems of sampling and preparation of samples are introduced at 25 concentrating plants. Introduction of the developed systems at sampling balance points of concentrating plants allowed double reducing balance deficiency."

Jan 1, 2018

By L. Filippov

"Nickel is an important metal with the total global consumption of about 2 million tons per year. It is sourced from both sulfide and laterite ore, but currently laterites are becoming more attractive for nickel production due to the depletion of high grade nickel sulfide ores. Laterites are generally processed by hydro or pyro-metallurgy and therefore, pre-concentration of nickel before such processes is very important. In this paper the effect different physical methods (including flotation) on the pre-concentration of nickel in laterite ores will be discussed. The ore used in this study was a laterite from South East Asia. Nickel was upgraded using different methods such as magnetic separation, flotation and sizing. The effect of ore mineralogy on choosing the best strategy to upgrade nickel will be discussed. The findings of this project will help to unlock a substantial volume of nickel with significant value from laterite ores.INTRODUCTION Nickel is an important metal with the total global consumption of about million tons per year which has grown rapidly during last decades (Mackey, 2011). Nickel is sourced from two different types of ores, sulfide and laterite. The majority (about 70%) of the world’s nickel resources occur as laterite ores which are often complex, and low grade, and therefore expensive to treat using conventional methods (Xu et al., 2013). Today, nickel laterites are more attractive for production of nickel as the amount of high grade nickel sulfide ores has diminished (Janwong, 2012). Therefore more economic processes to recover nickel from these resources should be developed.It should be noted that nickel laterite mineralogy is complex, and nickel often presents as ultrafine inclusions in a number of mineral phases. Because of the low nickel concentration and variable distribution in these phases, effective upgrading by physical separation processes would be challenging. Researchers have tried to improve nickel laterite flotation recovery by using a number of feed preparation techniques. A summary of the nickel grades obtained using flotation and magnetic separation as reported in the literature is presented in Table 1. It can be seen that only minor nickel upgrades have been reported. Quast et al. (2015) have concluded that the complex mineralogy of nickel laterite ores makes it difficult to achieve any significant nickel upgrading by physical techniques, including flotation. They achieved 40% increase in the nickel content (from 1.0% to 1.4%) at a nickel recovery of 43% (Quast et al., 2015). Various attempts in USA, New Caledonia, India and Australia, to upgrade nickel in laterite using magnetic separation have not been successful (Quast et al., 2015). A recent comprehensive review on topics influencing nickel laterite flotation has shown that further investigations in the flotation of laterite ores are undoubtedly warranted (Farrokhpay & Filippov, 2016)."

Jan 1, 2018

By G. W. Zhang

Ultra-fine Stirred Mill is a kind of high energy efficient equipment for ultra-fine grinding, and has been the mainstream equipment in the submicron powder and slurry industry. This paper mainly describes flow-field numerical simulation of the three popular ultra-fine grinding mills: (respective-ly as) Disc Stirred Mill, Pin Stirred Mill and Spiral Stirred Mill, by means of the software Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In the flow-field numerical simulation, the velocity gradient, shear rate dispersion of the flow-field, the viscosity dissipation rate were analyzed with CFD. It is discovered that Pin Stirred Mill has the highest velocity gradient in circular directions and the most homogeneous distribution of shear rate among the three. Flow-field numerical simulation provides a new way (and means to) for the parameter optimization design and project enlargement of Ultra-fine Stirred Mill. The experiments were also carried out, the results are consistent with the results of the simulation analysis. For example, in GCC grinding experiments under the same conditions, the specific energy consumption of Pin Stirred Mill with 3600L in volume is 15%~17% less, and its processing capability is 13%~15% better than Disc Stirred Mill. Now with its optimized structure and excellent performances, more than ten sets Pin Stirred Mill with 3600L in volume have been used in industrial production in Shandong, Guangdong and Hunan province.

Jan 1, 2014

By Al Cropp, Julie Hunt, Will Goodall, Ron Berry, Dee Bradshaw

Geometallurgy aids the understanding of ore body variability but has the most value if the data is easily available along the entire mining value chain. This requires cross-discipline communication and collaboration across traditional silos, and an organizational culture that encourages that to flourish. Data that are collected by the numerous groups (i.e. mining, geology, milling, processing, refining, smelting, marketing, environmental etc.) involved in the mining process may have relevance to other stakeholders; mineralogical and textural data for example has value to all these groups. Data required for modeling comminution or identifying acid potential from waste rock may already exist, however it needs to be made available to all the relevant stakeholders in the right format at the right time. As part of the GeM (AMIRA P843 & P843A) project the opportunity has been taken during the sponsor meetings, short courses, case studies etc. to ask the question: ‚What information do you want from further up the chain?? For example, to metallurgists ‚What information would you like from the geology group before the ore enters the mill?? The geology group may already have information important to mineral processing but not know it is of interest. This could, for example, be in the form of a geometallurgical drill core log that contains quantitative measured values. This paper focuses on the interaction between the mining, geology, mineral processing and environmental groups, using ore properties resulting from geological alteration to identify potential impacts throughout the mining process and discusses how a cross discipline approach can benefit all.

Jan 1, 2014

By Mingfei He, Yude Gao

"The leaching kinetics was studied during leaching of indium-bearing zinc oxide to recover indium. The effects of temperature, sulfuric acidity, particle size, stirring rate on dissolution rate of indium were investigated. Results showed that the leaching process was controlled by chemical reaction at the condition of low sulfuric acid concentration. While the acidity increased to 1.8 mol/L, the leaching process was transformed into an internal diffusion controlling model . The corresponding value of reaction orders under low acidity and high acidity were 1.194, 0.156, respectively. Further calculation results indicated that the leaching reaction activation energy was only 10.97kJ/mol under the condition of high acid. The leaching rate constant was inversely proportional to the square of particle size, while the effect of stirring rate on leaching process was insignificant. The leaching process can be enhanced by increasing the temperature and acid concentration, as well as the decrease of particle size. And a final kinetics eqution was proposed. KEYWORDS Indium, extration, leaching kinetics, zinc oxide INTRODUCTION Indium[1,2] plays an important role in many aspects of living and industrial production owning to its special physical and chemical properties. The reserve of indium is rare on the earth, and most of indium is distributed in some other minerals[3]. Some researchers [4,5] have proposed that indium mainly substitutes for the lattice of other minerals by isomorphous. Therefore, the extraction of indium should take into account of the production technologies of those minerals to comprehensively recover the valuable metals."

Jan 1, 2018

By J. J. Liu

In the Bayer process, control of alumina trihydrate particle size, oxalate stability and morphology and foaming is crucial for improving the yield and quality of alumina trihydrate. One way to economically achieve such control is to employ specifically developed chemical additives, termed, crystal growth modifiers (CGM?s). In this paper, the mechanism of action and practical application of CGM?s in the Bayer process are summarized. The application of CGM additives allows for both enhanced agglomeration and secondary nucleation control, and hence coarsening of the particles. Current research efforts have utilized the information gained from mechanistic studies to enhance the performance of CGM products. It was demonstrated in both laboratory tests and industrial operations that the newly developed CGM formulations have a range of properties with enhanced performance, compared to the current commercial products.

Jan 1, 2014

By S. Banisi, A. Ghasemi, S. Zare, F. Ghorbani, E. Nematollahi

"Comminution is the most energy intensive operation which constitutes the major portion of operating and capital costs of the mineral processing plants. Working at the maximum operating capacity of comminution equipment plays a significant role in the efficiency of the circuit. Appropriate design of cone crusher feed box could result in the choked crushing which is known as a vital factor in achieving target performance. In this research, the non-uniform cone crusher feeding at the Sarcheshmeh copper complex was studied and appropriate measures were taken to solve the problem. The problem resulted in non-uniform and high wear rate of crusher liners and high fluctuations of power draw. In recent decades, the discrete element method (DEM) has been applied successfully to study the effect of different factors on the behavior of particles flow. In this work, various designs for feed box were tested using an in-house developed DEM software called KMPCDEM©. The best feed box design obtained from the simulations was selected, constructed and installed in of the cone crushers. The new feed box design resulted in more uniform feed distribution on the distributor plate of crusher indicated by a reduction of the standard deviation of power draw measurements from 13 to 3 kWh. The better control of the crusher, 49% increase in the crusher throughput and finer and narrower product size distribution were the main outcomes of the installation of the new feed box. Furthermore, the wear rate on mantle and liners of crusher not only decreased but it also became uniform.INTRODUCTION Comminution is the most energy intensive operation which constitutes the major portion of operating and capital costs of the mineral processing plants. Reaching the maximum operating capacity in comminution equipment is a key sign of approaching the nominal productivity of the process. Due to the effect of crusher efficiency on the downstream circuit performance, optimization of the crushing circuits has received considerable attention (Herbst, & Potapov, 2004; Quist, & Evertsson, 2010; Li, Huiqi, McDowell, Glenn R, Lowndes and Ian, 2014; Cleary, Sinnott, Morrison, Cummins, & Delaney, 2017). Improving the performance of crushing circuits not only decreases the capital and operating costs but also increases the efficiency of downstream grinding circuits (Jacobson, Janssen, & Urbinatti, 2010). In cone crushers particles can be subjected to two different modes of compressive breakage; single particle breakage (free feeding) and inter-particle breakage (choked feeding). The maximum efficiency of the cone crusher directly depends on the type of feeding arrangement (Operation Manual, 1977). An appropriate feeding must lead to choked feeding the cone crusher. If the rate and method of feeding the crushers are correctly be executed, the maximum efficiency of the crushers could be available (Jacobson et al., 2010)."

Jan 1, 2018

By Rasool Hejazi

The feed to Chadurmalu iron ore concentrator plant is a mixture of magnetite and haematite iron ore with a Fe/FeO ratio of about 8. The feed to plant, after grinding via wet SAG mill, is pre-separated by wet low intensity magnetic separator. Magnetic product is conducted to magnetite processing circuit for producing magnetite concentrate, and nonmagnetic product is directed to haematite processing circuit. Due to surface oxidization of magnetite particles and a decrease in magnetic attraction properties, significant amount of these particles are misled to tailing which results in decreasing the efficiency of haematite processing circuit. This problem can be remedied by using magnetic drum separator with more magnetic intensity and/or gradient. In this paper, the replacement of LIMS separators with wet medium intensity magnetic separators with a field intensity of 3800 gauss on drum surface (MIMS) have been suggested and considered as the most suitable solution to prevent the loss of magnetite particles. The results of carried out investigations with replacement of drum separators in industrial scale, showed that utilizing MIMS in magnetite processing circuit resulted in increasing final concentrate weight recovery on average by 2.59%, without any adverse effect on the concentrate quality; decreasing the magnetite content in the feed to high gradient magnetic separator (HGMS) by about 3.5%; decreasing the feed to floatation part by about 7% and consequently decreasing consumption of chemical reagents; increasing Fe/FeO ratio of the feed to plant. Keywords: iron ore, medium intensity magnetic separator, haematite, Chadurmalu

Sep 1, 2012

By P. Condori

In spite of the importance of the slurry transport and discharge in autogenous and semiautogen-ous (AG/SAG) mills, it is evident that a more comprehensive and useful model is still required. Semi-empirical models used up to now have many limitations and cannot be used beyond the ranges in which they were developed. The breakage of particles as they are transported along a mill com-plicates the experimental analysis and the modelling of the transport process within the mill. The interaction of the grate discharge and the pulp lifters, with the added issue of backflow from the pulp chamber into the mill, makes the discharge modelling process difficult. In order to overcome these difficulties, a mechanistic approach has been applied. The general transport and discharge model was subdivided into four independent models: Flow through the charge, flow through the grate, flow in the pulp lifter, and flow-back. This paper gives an overall description of the modelling approach and discusses in particular the modelling of transport of fluids through the charge. In order to evaluate and calibrate the model, experimental work was carried out. To evaluate the gradient pressure under different conditions of charge packing and flow rate, a specialised experimental rig with a highly sensitive pressure gauge was used. Preliminary results identify the differences of the charge and grate on the restriction of flow. The existence of a dynamic voidage in our particular system was more evident and as a result, a semi-empirical correlation for the voidage was developed. In general, results show that the me-chanistic model derived from Ergun?s equation for flow through a packed bed can be satisfactorily adapted.

Jan 1, 2014

By J. J. Lui

Surfactant plays a critical role in many industrial processes such as petroleum, mining, environment and food processing, and daily life. For ionic surfactant systems, adsorption of surfactant at oil-water interface imposes a net charge to the interface. The nature and magnitude of the charges at the oil-water interface depend on charge characteristics of surfactant molecules, concentration of surfactant and solution pH. In our previous study, zeta potential measurement of hexadecane drop-lets in industrial process water was shown to be a simple, yet powerful method for identifying various types of ionic surfactants present in the aqueous system. In this paper, the site-binding model was applied to prediction of zeta potential of oil droplets in aqueous solutions containing a mixture of cationic and anionic surfactant molecules. The total number of interfacial sites for various types of surfactant involved was determined by applying the Gibbs adsorption equation to the measured interfacial tension-surfactant concentration profiles. The distribution of various types of surfactant molecules at the interfaces was evaluated by Langmuir isotherm constants. With the ionization constant of surfactant taken from the literature, the predicted zeta potentials of oil droplets in surfactant solutions from site binding model were shown in a reasonable agreement with the measured zeta potential values.

Jan 1, 2014

By F. A. V. Guimarães, A. M. Costa

"The moisture in sintering is a very important parameter for the performance of the process. It allows that the granulation takes pace in an efficient way making the water bridges between the bigger particles used as nucleus and the finer particles that perform the coating of those coarse particles. The formation of the micro pellets is extremely important to prevent loss in permeability of the bed in the sintering grate, avoiding excessive fuel consumption and producing a quality sinter. The aim of this project is to use some of the methodologies for determine the saturation degree on ores and coal to determine the optimal moisture for sintering. In the sinter pot grate series, 3 to 4 assays in a series of 10 are required to determine the optimal moisture for the process. The saturation degree curve test has shown that is really viable to use this technique to skip those tests and go directly to the series to determine productivity and the coke / anthracite consumption. In an industrial scale can be used to adjust the water addition in the conventional mixing methods used in the sintering plants to increase productivity in the process.INTRODUCTION Sintering Sintering is a high temperature agglomeration process in which iron ore fines are partially melted and bonded together using fluxes and a source of fuel, usually coke breeze. The agglomerated product, sinter, has improved metallurgical properties making it an ideal ferrous burden that enable the passage of hot gases in the iron-making blast furnace. The sintering process is normally carried out over three basic stages: granulation, ignition/sintering, and product sizing. In the granulation stage, iron ore fines (usually a blend of selected ores), sinter return fines, fluxes and fuel, and are mixed with water and micro-pelletised in a drum or disc before being introduced in the main granulation circuit. (Wang, Teng, & Wang, 2017)."

Jan 1, 2018

By Ata Akcil, Z. B. Karshigina, Ye. G. Bochevskaya, E. A. Sargelova, Z. S. Abisheva

Phosphorus slag is one of the most large-tonnage of yellow phosphorus production waste, which for decades stored in the slag disposal, by polluting the environment and creating environmental problems in the regions. Phosphorus slags from the processing of Karatau phosphorites are a very promising source of raw materials not only for silicon compounds but also rare earth metals (REM). Among the REM, yttrium, neodymium, europium and lutetium predominate, which are relevant to high-tech industries. The report presents technological scheme of complex processing of slags of phosphoric production with obtaining of REM concentrate and precipitated silicon dioxide ("white soot"). The regime parameters of the main operations of the technology are determined: I stage- leaching of slag with nitric acid solution; extraction of the REM-containing solution with tributyl phosphate and stripping of the REM with water; settling of solution of salts of oxalic acid, calcining the precipitate to obtain a concentrate S REM oxides and II stage of leaching silicon cake to obtain "white soot". Recovery of S REM from slags of phosphoric production on various redistribution has made, %: leaching – 95.0; extraction - 90.2; extraction on the average ~ 93.2; the production of a concentrate of REM oxide is 93.9. A concentrate containing 17.3 % of REM oxides was obtained. According to X-ray analysis it contains the following phases: calcium oxide, portlandite2, gadolinium oxide and yttrium, gadolinium oxide, gadolinium oxide and cerium, neodymium oxide, neodymium oxide and cerium. Thus, the concentrate can serve as a raw material for the production of individual rare-earth metals like gadolinium, cerium, yttrium and neodymium. After performing the II stage of leaching siliceous cake with nitric acid the samples of "white soot" were obtained. Its chemical composition corresponds to the state standard and has a specific surface area equal to 180 - 200 m2/g. The technology has been tested in a large-scale laboratory scale and will solve the problem of complex processing of phosphorus raw materials and import substitution in Kazakhstan. The end-to-end recovery of S REM oxides and silicon into concentrate and product from their initial content in slags is ~ 75.0 and 98.0 %, respectively.

Jan 1, 2018

By Ashish Agarwal

For a correct evaluation of the performance of any process, it is important to reconcile the data gathered in the plant from the material balance point of view for all the streams flowing in and flowing out of the process unit. There are two main approaches to reconciliation of data, which involve minimization of the sum of the squares of: (i) the closure residuals and (ii) the component adjustments; both weighed with the estimated variances of the components. Though, these approaches have served us well, it has not been possible to ascertain if the reconciled values for various components and the split factors obtained using these approaches are truly the best estimates. In this paper, this aspect has been investigated by analyzing pseudo-experimental data of known error structure on size classification of particles in a hydrocyclone. Three types of basic error structures were considered for the measured component values: absolute error, relative error and chi-square error. The error structure was modified by adding a random component of error using normally distributed random numbers corresponding to zero mean and different levels of variance. By carrying out a large number of simulation experiments, it has been shown that in the presence of random errors, irrespective of the basic error structure of data, which is usually unknown, the chi-square error minimization criterion can be used to obtain most reliable results. Keywords: data reconciliation methods, chi-square error minimization

Sep 1, 2012

By A. Bastrzyk

Text The mining and refining of minerals generates large amounts of solid waste. The waste from cleaning operations constitutes up to 90% of the total production. Although some of them can be used in mining, civil enegineering, construction, agriculture, most of them must be disposed in dumps and slurry ponds, causing major economic and enviromental problems (Alonso, 2002; Alon-so, 1999). The refuse from minerals cleaning may have considerable valuable particles content, which can be used in industry. Thus, the recovery of these particles from minerals waste by using a cleaning method effective at fine particle size, may overcome these consequences. Surfactants are used in numerous applications including emulsification and solid surface modification. In the oil agglomeration of minerals, the ionic surfactants (both anionic and cationic) are used for the hydrophobization of mineral surface and the oil-water emulsion preparation. When the cationic surfactant is injected into the oil-water mixture, surfactant molecules adsorb at the oil-water interface, changing droplets? properties. The addition of anionic surfactant to the mineral suspension was found to modify the solid-liquid interface. In this paper, the condition and mechanism of selective separation of magnesite from quartz are presented. A satisfactory was achieved with the amount of anionic collector (sodium oleate) equal to 15.2 mg/gsolid and with the amount of cationic collector 27.9 mg/gsolid for cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and 16.9 mg/gsolid for dodecyloammonium hydrochloride (DDAHCl) at pH 8. At these conditions, the amount of agglomerated carbonates was about 12% for CTAB and 5% for DDAHCl.

Jan 1, 2014

By D. Saramak

"High-pressure grinding technology is considered as one of the most efficient techniques of ore comminution, especially in terms of energy consumption. HPGR devices has been utilized in many mining-related industrial sectors, including iron and non-ferrous metal ores processing (copper, platinum, gold), as well as cement and limestone flour production. Even though the technology well known (introduced into mineral processing circuits in 80’s), there are still examples of ineffective operation of HPGR devices. This is a result of improper application of HPGR into individual crushing circuit. The purpose of the paper was to analyze selected effects achieved in HPGR on the course and effectiveness of beneficiation operations. Investigations were carried out for copper ore, and investigative programme was run for different values of HPGR pressing force, as well as changeable ore characteristics (content of fine size fractions, material moisture). All crushing products were then treated in flotation process, in order to determine useful mineral recovery. Results of investigations show that HPGR operating pressure influences the metal recovery in proportional way, however too extensive pressure values have relatively lower impact on increasing of the metal recovery. Particle size distribution of HPGR feed and its moisture have lower influence on recovery level than HPGR pressure, but too extensive moisture content influences the higher energy consumption of the roller press, together with less effective comminution. The second aspect raised in the paper was a possibility to control and optimize the HPGR-based circuit. There were presented the proposed approach to adjustment of HPGR operating parameters that enables the higher metal recovery.INTRODUCTION The high-pressure grinding technology, invented and developed by Professor Schoenert in 70’s (Schoenert, 1979), is currently regarded as one of the most efficient methods of hard ore comminution. Since then the technology was introduced into raw materials treatment circuits in many mining and mining-related industrial sectors, including iron and non-ferrous metal ores processing (copper, platinum, gold), as well as cement and limestone flour production. Considerable number of works concerning modeling and optimization of HPGR operation were also presented (Daniel & Morell, 2004, Tavares, 2005, Saramak, 2012, Saramak & Kleiv, 2013). Nowadays high-pressure grinding rolls devices are considered as well know technology with over 500 sold machines, according to various sources."

Jan 1, 2018

By Yuemin Zhao

Pre-combustion cleaning of coal plays a key role in the process of efficient and clean utilization of coal resources. Recently, wet beneficiation of coal is predominant around the world. Nevertheless, wet beneficiation processes are limited by the increasingly serious problem of worldwide shortage of water, especially in China. Thus, it is imperative to develop efficient dry coal beneficiation techniques. Currently, several technologies such as air dense medium fluidized bed, compound dry cleaning and air jigging have successfully achieved high-efficiency separation of 50~6 mm coal. However, in recent years, a large amount of fine coal is generated as the mechanized mining technology has been progressively deployed in coal sector. Thus, it is necessary to develop efficient dry beneficiation techniques for fine coal. In recent years, many countries including China, India, Canada, Germen, and Australia have carried out many research works on fine coal dry beneficiation techniques. China University of Mining and Technology has carried out systematic researches on the introduction the vibrated energy to traditional air dense medium fluidized bed for fine coal beneficiation. This paper studied air dense medium vibrated fluidized beds (ADMVFB) for fine coal dry beneficiation. The experimental results show that the coal of <6 mm size can be beneficiated in an ADMVFB efficiently with the E value of 0.065~0.085, the separating density can be adjusted in the range of 1.45~2.2 g/cm3, and the lower limit of beneficiation can reach to 0.5 mm. Keywords: fine coal, air dense medium vibrated fluidized bed, coal separation, dry separation

Sep 1, 2012

By S. Groudev

Acid drainage waters generated in the uranium deposit Curilo, Bulgaria, were treated by means of a pilot-scale passive system consisting of a permeable reactive multibarrier and a constructed wetland connected in a series. The multibarrier had a total volume of 23 m3 and consisted of an alkalizing limestone drain and an anoxic section for microbial dissimilatory sulphate reduction, bio-sorption and additional chemical neutralization. The waters had a pH in the range of about 2.5 ~ 4.0 and contained radionuclides (uranium, radium), heavy metals (copper, zinc, cadmium, lead, nickel, cobalt, iron, manganese), arsenic and sulphates in concentrations usually much higher than the relevant permissible levels for waters intended for use in agriculture and/or industry. The water flow rate through the multibarrier varied in the range of about 1 ~ 17 m3/24 h, reflecting water residence times of about 300 ~ 18 hours. An efficient removal of pollutants was achieved by the multibarrier during different climatic seasons, even during cold winter days at external air and water temperatures close to 0oC. The multibarrier effluents were enriched in dissolved organic compounds and in some cases still contained manganese and iron in concentrations higher than the relevant permissible levels. These pollutants were removed in the constructed wetland as a result of the activity of different heterotrophic microorganisms, including some bacteria able to oxidize the bivalent manganese and iron ions to Mn4+ and Fe3+, respectively.

Jan 1, 2014

By Luis Bergh, Juan Yianatos, Luis Vinnett

"Process automation as an engineering discipline is more than control systems since it includes industrial instrumentation, such as sensors, transmitters and actuators, as well as control and supervision systems, collection and transmission of data and real-time software applications to supervise and control the operation of plants or industrial processes. In the last several decades, accelerated technological development has provided a variety of software and hardware tools to aid development, maintenance and continuous improvement of automated systems. These developments however seldom reach their full potential in real plants. There are many factors to be considered, among them human capital specific training and the organization model. In this paper, a methodology for training engineers in advanced control and supervision of flotation plants is presented based on study of the application of these technologies in hybrid pilot plants. Since experimentation in real plants may present undesirable risks and costs, and simulation studies are usually limited to some unrealistic conditions, a laboratory where on-line measurements of the hydrodynamic behaviour of a pilot plant is mixed with phenomenological models has been created. In this form, an environment as close as possible to a real plant can be recreated. A flotation column and a circuit of three pneumatic cells are fully instrumented and connected to a PLC and PC network. In the control room, students learn applications of classical PID control in a DCS environment, advanced predictive control, on-line process operation diagnosis, fault analysis, virtual sensors and expert-fuzzy systems. Several undergraduate and graduate courses and theses are supported by this Process Control Laboratory infrastructure. Examples of these applications are discussed."

Jan 1, 2014

Due to complex mineralogical and chemical interactions of the value and gangue mineral phases present in uranium-containing lateritic ores, deleterious pulp gelation which impacts on value metal recovery sometimes occur during atmospheric leaching. In this study, the leaching behavior and particle interactions of selected oxide (hematite, quartz) and clay minerals (muscovite, chlorite), which constitute predominant host gangue phases of typical lateritic uranium ores are investigated to provide basic, mechanistic understanding of temporal pulp gelation phenomenon. Isothermal, batch leaching with H2SO4 was carried out on concentrated dispersions (30 ? 57 wt.%) of single minerals at pH 1 and 25 or 70 °C and their concomitant solution, speciation and rheology (shear yield stress, viscosity) were characterized. It is clearly shown that despite the high oxide content of lateritic ores, the pulp chemistry and rheology is largely affected by the incongruent leaching behavior of more reactive, acid-consuming aluminosilicate clays. Furthermore, time- and temperature-dependent alumino-silicate species polycondensation interfacial reactions are shown to be responsible for the enhanced particle interactions, reflecting strong pulp rheology in agitation and pumping. If not properly mitigated, high pulp shear yield stress and viscosity have a striking impact on processability and hence, value metal recovery.

Sep 1, 2012

By Stoyan Gaydardzhiev, Michel Shengo, Pierre Kalenga

Lab-scale flotation of copper and cobalt oxidized ore from the Luiswishi deposit in the Katanga province (DRC) has been done focusing on the influence of the degree of process water recycling on metals recovery. Results have shown that at 20 % recycling rate, the recovery of copper and cobalt in the cleaner stage have been respectively reduced to 23 % and 45 % in comparison to 53 % Cu and 63 % Co if process water has not been recycled. At 10 % recycling rate however, the system could still tolerate the effect from recycling, since Cu and Co recovery has remained respectively at acceptable levels of 52 % and 60 %. In order to explain the reasons for the observed worsening of flotation results if process water was recycled at rate higher than 20 %, electrochemical investigation of the pulp has been performed. It has been established that the chemical compounds formed in the pulp when process water was recycled, do influence the sulphidization of malachite and heterogenite and impact further collector adsorption. To confirm these assumptions, the effect from thiosulphate ions presence during the sulphidization of high purity malachite has been studied. It has been found, that thiosulphate ions depending on their concentration in water induce variations in pulp properties such as DO content, pH, Es and contribute to formation of undesirable chemical compounds on mineral surface as identified by DRIFT spectroscopy.

Jan 1, 2014