Replacing Mechanical Flotation Cells by a Flotation Column at the Pilot Plant of the Sarcheshmeh Copper Mine

Abstract

A flotation column could be considered as one of the major breakthroughs in the field of mineral processing in the last decades. Due to an increase in the trend of the use of these type of cells in the mineral processing plants, an investigation regarding the performance of these cells was initiated. The flotation column at the Sarcheshmeh pilot plant with some modifications was restarted. When all necessary measures were taken, the possibility of using the flotation cell in the cleaner and recleaner stages was investigated. Replacing the cleaner cells by the column flotation increased the separation efficiency by 7%. When the column cell was used as recleaner and both cleaner and recleaner, an improvement of 10% was observed. It was found that using a column cell instead of mechanical cells in addition to a decrease in repair and maintenance costs could result in 76% and 83% reduction in energy cost of cleaner and cleaner‐recleaner stages, respectively, at the pilot plant.

Keywords:

• Flotation
• flotation column
• mechanical cells

Acknowledgements

A considerable amount of support and help which the authors received from the management of R&D center and all personnel of the pilot plant of the Sarcheshmeh copper complex during the course of this research project are gratefully acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank the National Iranian Copper Industries Company for supporting this research and permission to publish this article.