In resource recovery from end-of-life printed circuit board (PCB), the physical processing route is considered most environmentally friendly. The −75 µm fraction generated during the comminution assays well above many precious and base metal deposits, but contributes overall drop in value recovery. This investigation was aimed at exploiting the versatility of froth flotation for beneficiation of the PCB comminution fines. Chemical composition characterisation work shows wet assay of constituents in the sample vary with digestion condition. Absolute assays as for hazardous constituents thus require comparison of data from more than one digestion condition. Comparative assaying of samples from beneficiation treatments can use aqua regia digestion which gives a less hazardous procedure compared to hydrogen fluoride combined with microwave and nitric acid treatments. It also gives leach liquor from which all constituent elements can be analysed, compared to that from total digestion via sodium peroxide fusion. For this sample total digestion will therefore not always give better results compared to partial digestion. Findings also show that thermogravimetric analysis may not be recommended in PCB characterisation. It gave no distinct inflexion point to characterize any constituent. This is due to the very diverse material constituents of the sample. Further on characterisation, the sample gave a loose bulk density lighter than water, and true sample density of 3 g/cm3. This coupled with surface hydrophobicity observed necessitates that pulping the sample must be done under water. Light optical and scanning electron microscopy showed particle liberation was very high, but not total. Morphology of the metallic particles was very diverse, with average circularity shape factor of 0.63. This coupled with the material diversity is a major constraint in sub-sieve size analysis of the sample. As shown by scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, the liberated particles themselves contain more than one chemical element, being alloys. Beneficiation operation therefore cannot attempt to separate such particles into constituent elements but some bulk collection of metallic values into a concentrate. Reverse flotation of metallic values based on a scheme described as natural hydrophobic response (NHR) was found successful. Favorable kinetics under the scheme gave about 500 rpm and 500 ml/min aeration rate, at 300 g sample in a 3.5 l Leeds cell. Without the use of a collector, natural hydrophobic response was observed. The system also gave a stable froth without the aid of a frother. Investigations (surface tension and dynamic froth stability height measurements, combined with general literature) show the NHR froth is a fine particle stabilised froth, and not surfactant stabilised. Au and Pd, were among the elements best enriched into the sink; 64 % recovery for Au at enrichment ratio of three. Flotation over narrower and coarser fraction (+106 – 75 µm) shows the NHR scheme can be successfully applied at this size. Chemical conditioning schemes investigated shows very minimal responses to reagents. Potassium amyl xanthate (PAX) did not condition the metallic particles for flotation remarkably as it does with native metals. Sulfidation with sodium hydrogen sulfide shows a little improvement in response to PAX. Sodium mercaptobenzothiazole – a very selective collector for tarnished copper and lead minerals – did not show such selectivity in the PCB comminution fines pulp. Some cationic pull with tetrabutyl ammonium chloride towards selective pull of non-metallic values after NHR pull has subsided was observed, although very little also. Macromolecular depression with carboxyl methyl cellulose did not subdue the natural hydrophobic response up to profuse percentage dosages. Depression by lowering surface tension, described as gamma depression, using Betamin 127A (active constituent: ethoxy nonyl phenol) was effective to wet hydrophobic particles, but still not helpful for selective pull after chemical conditioning. At the lowered surface tension, frothing sets in coupled with entrainment. Probable causatives for the poor response to reagents are surface oxidation of the metallic particles and depression by calcium ions in pulp. Surface studies with field emission scanning electron microscope and auger electron spectroscopy composition depth profiling, show presence of organic layers on the surface of the metallic particles. The surfaces were also found to be oxidised down to about 340 nm depth profiled. None of the surfaces is a pure alloy, but occurring in forms that will be relatively inert to reagents. Beside these, from aqua regia wet assaying, the sample contains about 7 % calcium by mass, and ICP-MS trace element analysis of the process water confirms calcium presence up to 7 ppm equilibrium concentration in the pulp. Judging from the responses, the natural hydrophobic response scheme can be well recommended for PCB comminution fines flotation. Optimisation of the performance of the scheme responds remarkably well to kinetic parameters variation. With the generally low impeller energy and aeration rate found favourable for PCB CF flotation, and the zero reagent cost (no collector, no frother) of the NHR scheme, PCB comminution fines flotation shows good prospects. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering / unrestricted

No description available.

Flotation is a process of separating particulate materials of different surface properties in a hydrodynamic environment, and is used extensively for separating different minerals from each other in the mining industry. In this process, air bubbles are introduced at the bottom of a particulate suspension (pulp), so that bubbles coated with hydrophobic particles rise to the top and form a froth phase while hydrophobic particles stay in suspension. The selectivity of the flotation process is determined by the hydrophobicity of the particulate materials involved, while the kinetics of the process is controlled by the hydrodynamic conditions and the disjoining pressures in the thin aqueous films between air bubbles and particles. In the present work, a mathematical model for the flotation process has been developed by considering both the hydrodynamic and surface chemical parameters. The model can describe the events occurring in both the pulp and froth phases of a mechanically-agitated flotation cell. The pulp-phase model is based on predicting the kinetics of bubble-particle attachment using the DLVO extended to include contributions from hydrophobic force and the theory of turbulent collision. The froth-phase model is based on predicting the rate of bubble-particle detachment by considering bubble coarsening and water recovery. The predictions from the overall flotation model are in general agreement with the results obtained in single-bubble flotation experiments and the flotation test results reported in literature. Since the model has been developed largely from first principles, it has predictive and diagnostic capabilities. / Ph. D.

This dissertation investigates the flow physics, turbulence structure, and particle classification process in hydrocyclones using large-eddy simulations of turbulent multiphase flow. Two types of hydrocyclones are considered. The first is a classifying hydrocyclone, and the second is a mineral flotation hydrocyclone, also known as an air-sparged hydrocyclone (ASH). Large-eddy simulations (LES) are conducted for multi-phase flow (air, water, and sand particles) so that the complex anisotropic turbulence of a swirling flow is computed correctly. The effects of mesh refinements on the mean flow and turbulence stresses are investigated, and (LES) results are validated by comparisons with experimental data for classifying hydrocyclone. The two-phase flow in air-sparged hydrocyclone has not been analyzed before. ANSYS CFX software V17.2 has been used to conduct the simulations. Firstly, large-eddy simulations have been conducted for two-phase flow (water and air) in a conventional hydrocyclone using the Eulerian two-fluid (Eulerian-Eulerian) and Volume-of- Fluid (VOF) models. Subgrid stresses are modeled using a dynamic eddy–viscosity model, and results are compared to those using the Smagorinsky model. The effects of grid resolutions on the mean flow and turbulence statistics have been thoroughly investigated. Five block-structured grids of 0.72, 1.47, 2.4, 3.81, and 7.38 million elements have been used for the simulations of a typical conventional hydrocyclone designed and tested by Hsieh (75 mm hydrocyclone) [1]. Mean velocity profiles and normal Reynolds stresses have been compared with experimental data. The results of the Eulerian two-fluid model agree with those of the VOF model. A fine mesh in the axial and radial directions is necessary for capturing the turbulent vortical structures. Turbulence structures in the hydrocyclone are dominated by helical vortices around the air core. Energy spectra are analyzed at different points in the hydrocyclone, and regions of low turbulent kinetic energy are identified and attributed to stabilizing effects of the swirling velocity component. Turbulent energy spectra in the different regions of the hydrocyclone have been analyzed. The energy spectra are calculated at two points near the air-water interface. They show a short inertial subrange where energy decays as f−5/3, followed by viscous damping where energy drops as f−7, where f is frequency. However, for the points located near the boundary where high turbulent kinetic energy is found, the energy spectra exhibit f^(−4) decay. Secondly, the two-fluid (Eulerian two-fluid) model and large-eddy simulation are used to compute the turbulent two-phase flow of air and water in a cyclonic flotation device known as an Air-Sparged Hydrocyclone (ASH). In the operation of ASH, the air is injected through a porous cylindrical wall. The study considers a 48-mm diameter hydrocyclone and uses a block-structured fine mesh of 10.5 million hexahedral elements. The air-to-water injection ratio is 4, and a uniform air bubble diameter of 0.5 mm has been specified. The flow field in ASH has been investigated for the inlet flow rate of water of 30.6 L/min at different values of underflow exit pressure. The present simulations show that the value of static pressure imposed at the underflow section strongly affects the distribution of air volume fraction, water axial velocity, tangential velocity, and swirling layer thickness in ASH. The loci of zero-axial velocity surfaces have been determined for different exit pressures. The water split ratio through the overflow opening varies with underflow exit pressure as 6%, 8%, 16%, and 26% for 3, 4, 5, and 6 kPa, respectively. These results indicate that regulating the pressure at the underflow exit can be used to optimize ASH's performance. Turbulent energy spectra in different regions of the hydrocyclone have been analyzed. Small-scale turbulence spectra at near-wall points exhibit f^(−4) law, where f is frequency. Whereas for points at the air-column interface, the energy spectra show an inertial subrange f^(−5/3) followed by a dissipative range of f^(−7) law. Thirdly, large-eddy simulation (LES) has been used to investigate the flow separation in multi-phase flow (gas, liquid, and solid) in a classifying hydrocyclone using the multi-fluid (Eulerian multi-fluid) model. The results of the CFD simulation are compared with the Hsieh [1] experimental data. The water phase is considered a continuous phase, while air and solid particles are considered dispersed phases. Drag between water-air and water-sand is the only considered interfacial force. The Schiller-Naumann and Wen-Yu models are used to model the drag, and the Gidaspow model is used to calculate the solid pressure term. Various particle sizes are tested in the hydrocyclone to investigate the underflow recovery percentages. The results agree with the experimental data for the particles of a diameter smaller than 20 μm, while the results vary based on the model for the large particles. Therefore, using the Wen Yu and Schiller-Naumann model for the drag model and the Gidaspow model for the solid pressure in the three-fluid model could give acceptable results for the small particles underflow recovery and volume fraction distribution. However, the models failed for large particles. Finally, the large particle size separation needs more investigation. / Doctor of Philosophy / Hydrocyclones are widely used in mining and chemical industries. They can be used as separation devices to separate solid or fluid particles based on their size or/and weight. They can also be used as flotation devices to capture certain mineral particles from a slurry of water and solid particles. The flow field within a hydrocyclone is complex as it involves flow of different phases of matter (liquid, gas, and solid). It is also a turbulent flow in which the velocity and pressure fluctuate in time with many frequencies. The efficiency of the hydrocyclone depends on its geometry and distribution of the velocity. Computer simulations are very efficient tools to predict and study the flow field in hydrocyclones. This dissertation used a computer simulations to explain how turbulence could affect the particle separation from the slurry inside the hydrocyclones. The water's velocity fields, swirling flow, air behavior, pressure distribution and turbulence statistics are analysed. Understanding the turbulence structure and statistics in hydrocyclones is important for particle tracking and dispersion. Also, turbulent structure affects the motion of the air bubbles and solid particles in the flow field, which eventually will affect the hydrocyclone's performance. In short, a more comprehensive understanding of the behavior of turbulence of hydrocyclones represents an important tool that can guide the design of hydrocyclones according to their use goals and will help engineers who model these processes to develop a better model.

Froth floatation is an important process used in the mining industry for separating minerals from each other. The separation process is based on rendering a selected mineral hydrophobic using an appropriate hydrophobizing reagent (collector), so that it can selectively attach onto the surfaces of a rising stream of air bubbles. Thus, controlling the hydrophobicity of the minerals to be separated from each other is of critical importance in flotation. If one wishes to separate plastics from each other by flotation, however, it would be necessary to render a selected plastic hydrophilic and leave the others hydrophobic. In the present work, the possibility of separating common plastics from each other by flotation has been explored. While water contact angle is the most widely used measure of the hydrophobicity of a solid, it does not give the information on the kinetics of flotation. Therefore, the forces acting between the surfaces coated with different hydrophobic polymers (or plastics) in water were measured using the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The results obtained with polystyrene, polymethylmethacryrate (PMMA), polypropylene (PP), and Teflon showed the existence of long-range attractive forces (or hydrophobic force) that cannot be explained by the classical DLVO theory. The surface force measurements were conducted in pure water and in solutions of surfactant (alkyltrimethylammonium chloride) and a salt (NaCl). In pure water, the attractive forces were much stronger than van der Waals force. In the presence of the surfactant and NaCl, the long-range attraction decreased with increasing concentration and the alkyl chain length. A series of contact angle measurements were conducted to determine the hydrophobicity of polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chlorite (PVC), and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) in the presence of different wetting agents (surfactants). The results show the possibility of separating plastics from each other by flotation, and a series of microflotation tests conducted on PS and PVC showed promising results. / Master of Science

Froth flotation is the most commonly used process to recover and upgrade the portion of the coal preparation plant feed that has a particle size smaller than 150 microns. Problems that occur when employing froth flotation in the coal industry include i) coal surfaces that are weakly-to-moderately hydrophobic, and ii) flotation systems that are overloaded and limited by insufficient retention time. Research was performed to evaluate techniques that could be implemented to improve flotation performance under the aforementioned scenarios. Pre-aeration of flotation feed using a cavitation system was extensively evaluated in laboratory and full-scale test programs. The benefits of adding hydrophobic, magnetic plastic particles were also investigated to improve froth stability and increase bubble surface area. Laboratory tests revealed that pre-aeration through a cavitation tube improved coal recovery by as much as 20 absolute percentage points in both conventional cells and flotation columns when treating difficult-to-float coals. Carrying capacity increased by 32% which was projected to provide a 4 t/h increase in flotation recovery for a typical 4-m diameter flotation column. Product size analyses suggest that the improved particle recovery was more pronounced for the finest coal fractions as a result of particle agglomeration, resulting from the use of the nucleated air bubbles on the coal surfaces as a bridging medium. In-plant testing of a commercial-scale cavitation system found that feed pre-aeration could reduce collector dosage by 50% when no additional air is added and by 67% when a small amount of air is added to the feed to the cavitation system. At a constant collector dosage, recovery increased by 10 absolute percentage points with cavitation without additional air and 17 absolute points when additional air is provided. The addition of hydrophobic plastic particles to the flotation feed at a 10% concentration by weight was found to substantially improve froth stability thereby elevating the recovery and enhancing carrying-capacity. Test results showed that the primary flotation improvements were directly linked to the coarsest particle size fractions in the plastic material which supports the froth stability hypothesis. Combustible recovery was increased up to 10 percentage points while producing the desired concentrate quality.

No description available.

This project investigates the optimisation of platinum-group metals recovery at the Mimosa Mine in Zimbabwe. The first part of this research investigates how collector performance can be improved by using collector combinations (mixtures) of the standard sodium iso-butyl xanthate with a secondary collector. The synergistic effect of the sodium-iso-butyl-xanthate (SIBX) combined with trithiocarbonates (TTCs) or dithiophosphates (DTP) was investigated. The short chain and the long chain TTCs were investigated. These collector combinations were studied at various molar percent ratios. The SIBX:DTP combination was studied at a 1:1 mass ratio or molar ratio of 1:1.3. Amongst all the collector combinations, it was established that the SIBX/DTP combination improved sulphur recoveries by 10% and subsequently the PGE+Au recovery by 10% compared to when the SIBX was used on its own. The C4-TTC showed poor performance in the sulphur recovery; however an improvement in PGE + Au recovery was noticeable. There was generally no significant metallurgical improvement with respect to final grades and recoveries with C10 and C12TTC mixtures with SIBX. However, the 6.25 molar per cent substitution of SIBX by C12TTC appeared to show some improvement on sulphur but not on PGM+Au recovery and grade. It was therefore concluded that the SIBX/DTP combination at 1:1 mass ratio (total moles of 0.64) showed a potential to improve the grades and recoveries of the Mimosa Mine. The Mimosa ore is characterised by an unusually large amount of talc, which often causes problems during the flotation of the PGM minerals due to the fact that talc consumes high amount of reagents. Therefore the purpose of the second part of this thesis was to investigate the possibility of removing talc prior to the flotation process by de-sliming. Two cyclones (36.9 mm and 76.0 mm) were used for de-sliming the flotation feed. De-sliming the ore was able to reduce the depressant dosage up to 300 g/t as opposed to 500 g/t that is used at Mimosa Mine. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering / unrestricted

In the iron ore mining fraternity, in order to achieve the desired quality in the froth flotation processing plant, stakeholders rely on conventional laboratory test technique which usually takes more than two hours to ascertain the two variables of interest. Such a substantial dead time makes it difficult to put the inherent stochastic nature of the plant system in steady-state. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the feasibility of using machine learning algorithms to predict the percentage of silica concentrate (SiO2) in the froth flotation processing plant in real-time. The predictive model has been constructed using iron ore mining froth flotation system dataset obtain from Kaggle. Different feature selection methods including Random Forest and backward elimination technique were applied to the dataset to extract significant features. The selected features were then used in Multiple Linear Regression, Random Forest and Artificial Neural Network models and the prediction accuracy of all the models have been evaluated and compared with each other. The results show that Artificial Neural Network has the ability to generalize better and predictions were off by 0.38% mean square error (mse) on average, which is significant considering that the SiO2 range from 0.77%- 5.53% -( mse 1.1%) . These results have been obtained within real-time processing of 12s in the worst case scenario on an Inter i7 hardware. The experimental results also suggest that reagents variables have the most significant influence in SiO2 prediction and less important variable is the Flotation Column.02.air.Flow. The experiments results have also indicated a promising prospect for both the Multiple Linear Regression and Random Forest models in the field of SiO2 prediction in iron ore mining froth flotation system in general. Meanwhile, this study provides management, metallurgists and operators with a better choice for SiO2 prediction in real-time per the accuracy demand as opposed to the long dead time laboratory test analysis causing incessant loss of iron ore discharged to tailings.

No description available.