| This research involved numerous team based industrial campaigns to measure hydrodynamic conditions (superficial gas velocity (Jg), gas hold-up (epsilong), bubble diameter (Db) and frother concentration) in industrial flotation cells. The primary focus of this thesis is the data collected at Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.'s LaRonde concentrator and Inmet Mining Corp's Troilus concentrator. These campaigns helped identify key measurements and required steps toward controlling hydrodynamic characteristics for cells and banks of cells. This research sought to investigate the dependence of bank performance on the setting of profiles for both gas velocity and frother concentration. Some cell characterization and frother analysis work is described. The difficulty of manipulating frother addition rates on the plant scale identified laboratory opportunities to study the interaction of frothers to link hydrodynamic characteristics and froth quality. The laboratory experimental set up involved the use of a laboratory scale flotation column. This set up was used to investigate independent addition of a bubble size controlling frother (e.g., pentanol) with a froth quality controlling frother (e.g., Flottec F150) to test for independent control over the two functions. |
