Robust tracking control of column froth flotation process with an unknown disturbance

Abstract

This manuscript develops a robust output regulator for the column froth flotation process in the presence of unknown disturbance. In particular, motivated by relevant physical modeling setting, all information (including magnitude, phase, bias, and frequency) of the disturbance is unavailable. The system considered is consisting of froth and collection zones and is governed by a set of conservative heterodirectional transport hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs). Moreover, the transport related time delay between the froth and the collection region is considered, and is associated with the boundary conditions of the PDEs. The velocity of the feed is considered the input and the concentration of the solid particle with air phase at the top of froth region as the output. We propose a disturbance frequency identifier and formulate a robust controller according to the internal model principle such that the output tracks the desired concentration despite the model uncertainties and unknown disturbance.

Froth stability and entrainment evaluation of a novel frother for KCl/NaCl flotation

“…However, with the rapid consumption of high‐grade ores, the utilization of low‐grade potassium ores containing impurities has caused many challenges for the flotation process. Thus, research on the froth flotation process is essential to increase flotation efficiency 3 . In the froth flotation cell, the particle separation process can be divided into three main sub‐processes 4,5 : (1) the collision of solid particles with air bubbles; (2) the attachment of particles to the bubble surface; and (3) the relocation of the solid–liquid–gas interface at the bubble surface to form a stable bubble‐particle aggregate.…”