North-Caucasian Mining and Metallurgical Institute (State Technological University) (Russia):

Yevdokimov S. I., Associate Professor, Ph. D. in Engineering Sciences, eva-ser@mail.ru

Yevdokimov V. S., Bachelor, 19-Vadik-93@mail.ru

The article presents a new approach to utilization of temperature rise positive effect upon flotation process: not the total volume of flotation pulp is heated, but thin (<2 micron) boundary layer of bubbles with altered structural-sensitive water properties, determining stability of wetting film. For this purpose, mixture of air with water steam was used as gaseous phase in flotation; decrease in heating steam consumption for the process was obvious. By means of experiments, modeling closed circuit, ore sample dressability was studied in jet flotation with rougher concentrate production in two stages: Stage I rougher concentrate was produced from half of feed material and mixed with the remaining half of feed material to produce final Stage II rougher concentrate, to be subjected to cleaning. The article describes the main factors (size of steam bubbles and oscillations of bubble's wall), as well as the main reasons for process efficiency: increase in particles' recovery by means of steam bubbles is caused through bubbles redistribution with regard to size toward smaller bubbles, probability of collisions with which is higher; bubble's wall oscillations are accompanied by liquid outflow from clearance between particle and bubble, clearance becomes smaller and probability of particle attachment to bubble increases; probability of flotocomplex retention is increased through surface tension depression growth; process selectivity is increased through rejection of insufficiently hydrophobic particles from surface of small bubbles.

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