Characterisation of coarse composite sphalerite particles with respect to flotation

Fosu, Shadrack; Pring, Allan; Skinner, William; Zanin, Massimiliano

doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2014.08.023

Cited by 12 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This research sought to address this gap by investigating the flotation behaviour of copper minerals in different exposed grain texture classes from two industrial copper flotation circuits. Recent attempts (Fosu, et al, 2015a) to determine the effect of grain texture on flotation recovery presented findings that showed simple textures recovered more readily. Apart from the fact that the assessments were done for a wide size distribution (75-600 m) no reference was made to the errors associated with the mass of the target mineral within the different texture classes.…”

Section: Structure Of the Thesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In more recent work Fosu, et al (2015a) studied the laboratory flotation behaviour of coarse composite sphalerite particles as a function of the locking ratio (LR) of the sphalerite grains, defined as:…”

Section: Ore_2mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When air bubbles are pinned to the edges of hydrophobic grains then the attachment force is stated to be proportional to the length of the contact lines and not necessarily the fraction of hydrophobic mineral present at the surface (Gautam & Jameson, 2012). Although Fosu, et al (2015a) concluded that differences in the spatial distribution of the exposed hydrophobic grains was responsible for the differences in the behaviour of sphalerite-bearing particles, their textural indicator the locking ratio (see equation (13)), is a bulk textural indicator and does not represent the spatial distribution of the sphalerite grains with respect to one another. In fact, none of the particle or mineral textural descriptors discussed so far (particle composition and liberation, grain size distributions, phase specific surface area, intergrowth texture complexity and locking ratio) provide a description of the spatial distribution of target mineral grains at particle surfaces.…”

Section: Spatial Distribution Of Hydrophobic Mineral Grains In Composmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the same manner as Fosu, et al (2015a) the particle sections may then be classified according to the value of the perimeter texture index, within a particular perimeter composition class, and the mass proportion of a mineral of interest within the different perimeter texture-composition classes can be determined. This will lead to a variation in the number of particle sections within the different perimeter texture-composition classes which according to the literature (Mariano & Evans, 2015;Evans & Napier-Munn, 2013;Lamberg & Vianna, 2007) impacts greatly on the confidence intervals that may be placed on the textural characteristics derived from the particle sections.…”

Section: Quantifying the Spatial Arrangement Of Mineral Grains At Commentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A review of the literature in Chapter 2 revealed evidence suggesting the spatial arrangement of exposed hydrophobic mineral grains play a role in the recovery process (Hua, et al, 2009;Gautam & Jameson, 2012;Fosu, et al, 2015a;Fosu, et al, 2015b) but that the indicators most frequently used to describe the microtexture of minerals within a particle or particle population -grain size, phase specific surface area (PSSA), intergrowth complexity, locking ratio and surface composition -do not provide a means of quantifying this characteristic for exposed grains. When air bubbles attach to mineral particle surfaces the bubbles are pinned to surface irregularities and sharp edges of these particles (Gautam & Jameson, 2012;Feng & Nguyen, 2016) and these attachment forces are greater than those exhibited by smooth surfaces or round particles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The effect of mineral grain textures at particle surfaces on flotation response

Vos¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research investigates the contribution of the spatial arrangement of hydrophobic mineral grains at particles surface towards their flotation response and its implications for forecasting flotation response. The approach taken was to estimate this grain textural characteristic from particle sections and to identify how it affected the overall rougher and scavenger copper mineral flotation recovery from two industrial copper flotation circuits.For the second circuit the overall rougher flotation kinetic parameters for the copper mineral were also evaluated.The first contribution of this work is the demonstration that a novel textural indicator is relevant to understanding the contribution of exposed mineral grain texture on the flotation process. It is the first mineral grain textural indicator that considers both the size of the grains and the degree to which they are dispersed at the particle surface. When the indicator was applied to particle sections from flotation feed, concentrate and tail samples from two industrial copper flotation circuits, it was shown, for the first time, with confidence that while particle size and perimeter composition affect particle flotation response the spatial arrangement of the copper mineral grains at the particle surface plays a key role.For the iron-oxide-copper-gold ore, copper mineral grains in complex texture classes produced statistically higher overall rougher recoveries for the 0-20% perimeter composition class. Chalcopyrite grains in complex texture classes in the copper porphyry ore produced higher overall rougher and scavenger recoveries for the 20-40% perimeter composition class. For the 0-20% perimeter composition class statistically meaningful differences were observed for the +106 m size class. It was shown that the higher overall recoveries for the complex texture classes in this case were due to increases in the overall rougher rate of flotation, the proportions of recoverable chalcopyrite in the feed or both. For both ores the largest proportions of copper mineral within complex perimeter texture classes were within coarse particles and complex textures were less common when particle perimeters comprised more than 40% of the copper minerals. This demonstrated that in order to study the impact of this textural characteristic for the two ores it must be done within well-defined particle size and perimeter composition classes, an important outcome that has not been reported in the current literature.The second contribution is a three-step method for evaluating the flotation response of copper minerals within different grain texture classes namely; particle perimeter texture II estimation, determining coefficients of variation in the mass proportions of the target mineral within perimeter texture-composition classes and mass reconciliation and recovery calculations. Another key contribution is in applying the bootstrap resampling technique to estimate these coefficients. This demonstrated the sensitivity of seemingly feasible perimeter texture-compos...

show abstract

Section: Structure Of the Thesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ore_2mentioning

confidence: 99%