St. Petersburg Mining University (St. Petersburg, Russia):
Aleksandrova T. N., Нead of Сhair, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, Professor, alexandrovat10@gmail.com
Nikolaeva N. V., Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, nadin1984@spmi.ru
Lvov V. V., Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, opilvv@spmi.ru
Romashev A. O., Associate Professor, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, art3m@spmi.ru

At present, specialized software packages designed to simulate industrial processes are being used when designing new and upgrading existing processing plants. Process samples of carbonaceous polymetallic ores were selected for the study. Based on the physical and mechanical properties studied, a sustainable ore preparation circuit with respective instrumentation and operating regimes was proposed. This circuit enables obtaining the finished product with the particle size of over 90 % passing 0.071 mm at its peak performance, with the lowest possible circulating load and energy consumption. The paper presents the simulation results for the process flotation circuit, consisting of a carbon flotation cycle and a sulfide flotation cycle, designed using JKSimFloat specialized software. Based on the calculation of the surface activation energy and using the differential method, it is found for the samples that the average activation energy in combustion of a sample containing both kerogen and bitumen is significantly higher than that in combustion of a sample containing kerogen only. The comprehensive study of the mineralogical and process (physical and mechanical, flotation, etc.) properties of the initial ores and their processing products, combined with the simulation modeling, allowed substantiating a sustainable process circuit for processing the ores studied.
The work was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No.19-17-00096).

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