Khopunov E. A., Doctor of Engineering (Russia), hopunov@mail.ru; Voronchikhin S. L., Russia.

Floccules or aggregates formation, consisting of quantities (usually, several tens) of particles, is the result of pairwise interactions of particles, that possess intrinsic magnetic moments. The article presents a brief description of a measurement system, permitting to register particles pairwise interactions processes, floccules formation kinetics and dynamics of their stability in different fields. An estimate of single particles interactions character by the particles pairs approach dynamics registration data, with respect to particles pairs located in magnetic field at various distances, is presented. On the basis of studies of particles pairwise interactions kinetics filming in constant magnetic fields, relationships between average rate of particles aggregation into floccules and particles characteristics, size and parameters of medium, were obtained. By way of example of pyrrhotine and magnetite particles, it was shown that in spite of difference in magnetization, their aggregation rates may be the same. It was revealed, that owing to residual effects, large pyrrhotine particles attract small magnetite particles, holding that «magnetic environment», and then acting like particles of «other material» with a higher magnetization, than that of original «clean» pyrrhotine particles. It is shown, that aggregative force of particles in floccules depends on their sizes and decreases with decrease in particle size, while floccules limiting length is determined by magnetic susceptibility of particles, besides, specific aggregative force (aggregative force relation to floccules mass) increases with decrease of particle size. It was established, that rate of particles aggregation into floccules is more a function of magnetic field intensity, than sizes of particles, and search of optimal conditions for each separation zone must be accomplished with consideration of separated minerals magnetic characteristics dispersion, their dependence on magnetic field intensity value and sizes of particles, topography of field in corresponding zones and hydrodynamic regime parameters in each separation zone (velocity, viscosity, etc.).

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