It is required to design a flotation circuit comprising of rougher, cleaner and

Question

It is required to design a flotation circuit comprising of rougher, cleaner and scavenger banks to treat a mixed sulphide ore of copper (average grade 2.0% ) and zinc (ave grade 4%) at 300 tonne/h. The main copper mineral is chalcopyrite and the zinc sis sphalerite. You may assume a suitable size distribution for the feed which is the overflow from the cyclone at a suitable grind size. a. Describe the method you would adopt to design a flotation circuit. Specify the testwork required to obtain ore-specific information.

Explanation / Answer

Copper flotation circuit

the cyclone overflow from each ball mill goes to a pulp distributor which distributes the pulp to two or more parallel banks of flotation cells . these distributions are designed so that one or more flotation banks can be shut down for maintenance or inspection and still maintain equal distribution of feed to the remaining banks

in some cases it is beneficial to have conditioning before flotation, but this varies from one operation to another and it is not shown in this flow sheet . 10 or more "free-flow" flotation cells are used per bank and these cells are divided in two groups or four or 6 cells with an intermediate step-down Weir between groups ."free-flow" flotation cells are specified as metallurgy is extremely good while both maintenance and operating expenses are traditionally low. one or more "free-flow" mechanism can be stopped for inspection or even replaced for maintenance without shuting down the bank of cells.

the concentrates from rougher flotation cells are sent directly to regrind . often the grind is 200-mesh . afetr regrind is flotation cleaning . In some cases the concentrate from the first three or four rougher flotation cells can be sent directly to cleaning without regrinding.

after the rougher flotation concetrate is regrind it is cleaned twice in additional free flow. flotation machines with the recleaned concentrate going to final concentrate filtration or , as the metallurgy dictates , to a copper molly separation circuit

the tailings of midlings from the flotation cleaning circuit can either go to a cleaner- scavanger circuit as shown on the flow sheet or can be returned to the original rougher flotation cells.

flowsheet

copper mining

crushing copper ore

copper ore storage

grinding copper ore

copper thickening and filtering

process controls

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