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By Taisuke Sakakibara, Shinya Suzuki, Tatsuya Kato, Chiharu Tokoro, Kenichi Muto

Surface complexation using a diffuse layer model were constructed for arsenic (As(V)), zinc (Zn(II)) and silicate (Si(IV)) for aluminum hydroxide in the co-precipitation process. From experimental investigations using isotherms, zeta potential measurement and XRD analysis, it was confirmed that co-precipitation involved not only surface complexation but also surface precipitation. However, surface complexation was major mechanism for As(V), Zn(II) and Si(IV) removal under the target removal level of the Japanese effluent standard. In surface complexation modeling, exchange capacity of aluminum hydroxide was determined from specific surface area obtained from experimental measurement and site density obtained from reference. Surface complexation coefficients were determined by fitting the removal property and sorption isotherm obtained from co-precipitation experiments. These parameters were in agreement with the numerical parameters found by Karamalidis and Dzombak (2010) who reported a database of adsorption equilibrium constants for gibbsite. The surface complexation models constructed in this study were applied to neutralization process of an actual AMD treatment. Our model could successfully represent the pH edges for As(V), Zn(II) and Si(IV) in the neutralization of AMD.

Jan 1, 2015

By George P. Demopoulos, Yan Zeng, Zhibao Li

Precipitated silica is marketed with a rising demand as reinforcing filler in the rubber industry and as a potential raw material for the synthesis of lithium-ion battery electrodes. Due to an awareness of the environmental impact of the existing processes for the production of precipitated silica, a green and sustainable process was proposed by using sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) as an alternative to sulfuric or hydrochloric acid in the precipitation reaction with sodium silicates. The use of NaHCO3 allows for better control of the supersaturation and pH to form silica with desired quality. Additionally, Na2CO3 solution as the process by-product is recyclable because it could be recovered to produce NaHCO3 by absorbing CO2. The solubility of sodium metasilicate nonahydrate (Na2SiO3·9H2O) in the Na-CO3-HCO3-OH-H2O system was measured using a dynamic method in the temperature range from 288.15 to 308.15 K. It is found that the solubility of Na2SiO3·9H2O decreases with increasing concentration of either Na2CO3 or NaOH over the investigated concentration range. With the aid of the OLI platform, a chemical model for the Na2SiO3-Na-CO3-HCO3-OH system was established with newly obtained interaction parameters of the Bromley-Zemaitis model by regression of experimental solubility data. The new model predicted the solubility of Na2SiO3·9H2O in multi-component systems with good agreement and was used to conduct a preliminary feasibility study of the new process.

Jan 1, 2015

By Glen Robertson, Jeff McLaughlin

"The Clarabelle Mill rock tailings have the potential to generate sulphuric acid through chemical and biological oxidation of sulphide minerals. Current rock tailings assay between 0.80 -1.40 %S, with sulphur occurring principally as coarse pyrrhotite. Acid generation within the tailings area can be substantially reduced by segregating pyrrhotite rich tailings in a submerged storage area and by depositing only low sulphur rock tailings in exposed areas. Laboratory tests confirmed that low sulphur tailings could be produced by flotation at reduced pH with a small xanthate addition. A plant test was conducted to evaluate the production of low sulphur tailings in conjunction with INCO's continuing commitment to environmental protection and progressive decommissioning of the metallurgical site.During the plant evaluation, approximately 5% of the mill rock tailings were reprocessed in a line of 100 tt3 Denver flotation cells. Tailing grades below 0.40% S were easily achieved through operation at pH 6 -7, with xanthate addition (dosages up to 0.02 lb/ton) and 10 -15 minutes of nominal retention time. Froth depths between 1 -3 inches combined with relatively liberal amounts of frother were required to pull the lightly mineralized froth into the concentrate which averaged 11% sulphur and less than 5% mass recovery. In addition, three field lysimeters were each filled with two hundred.ton bulk samples of low sulphur tails (0.35% S), standard rock tailings (0.98% S), and mill total tailings (2.30% S) for long term monitoring. The implications for full scale plant design, tailings area decommissioning, the possibility of increased nickel recovery and preliminary field lysimeter data are discussed."

Jan 1, 1994

By George C. Riley

While the general public has little knowledge or appreciation of either the mining or explosives industries, modern civilization could not exist without them. They are to-day the key industries of the world. In common with many other industries the demands of the war greatly stimulated the production of explosives and the research necessary for such increased production. Production, supplies of all kinds, munitions of all sorts and then again production, practically regardless of cost, were the first reactions to the imperative war demands of the governments of the world. Following the war there was a momentary lull, then first gradually but with quickening acceleration, particularly in a recent slump, the situation was reversed - cost and not production was the dominant factor. Some industries readjusted themselves very rapidly and completely. Others were but partially re-adjusted and others again only carried out the process of deflation in certain departments. The explosives industry in Canada has not only thoroughly deflated itself, but has learned to apply to commercial disruptive explosives, the best, most efficient and most economical methods of manufacturing developed during the war. As a consequence, miners have at their disposal to-day better and more different kinds of compressed energy than ever before in all the long history of mining.

Jan 1, 1925

By Brian Hall

For some years, the mining industry has been consistently delivering returns below the market average. One of the causes is a disconnect between what is perceived to drive value creation by many industry analysts and senior corporate executives, and what actually drives the intrinsic value of mining operations. The perverse effect is that strategies that should increase value are perceived to have the potential to drive share prices down, and vice versa. This paper challenges common perceptions of what drives a mining company?s value. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the key drivers of value in the market, and hence in many boardrooms, are such things as increasing the reserves and production rate, and reducing unit operating cost. However, while the quoted reserves may satisfy ore reserves reporting code requirements to be economic, this does not imply that they are optimal. Often, a proportion of the quoted reserve reduces the potential value of the operation. Metal price increases, increased production rates, and operating cost reductions are all seen as conditions or actions that can improve value, and lead to cutoff grade reductions, thereby increasing ore reserves. However, modern cutoff theory and studies conducted by the author and his colleagues show clearly that, while breakeven cutoff grades will fall in these circumstances, optimum cutoffs may be much less volatile, and may even increase. Results from case studies indicate that value is maximised by right-sizing, not maximising, the production capacities, and by optimising the cutoff strategy. Values of many existing underground mining operations can be increased significantly by a substantial cutoff grade increase. Also, an increase in downside risk, and hence reduced returns, can occur using typical life-of-mine planning strategies if prices received are lower than predicted. Since this is often the case, low industry returns may be a direct result of typical strategic mine planning processes. Relatively simple cost-effective techniques are available to provide senior decision makers with information needed to assess the tradeoffs between their many conflicting corporate goals, and the balance between risk and reward. Often this information is not being generated at all. If it is, decisions affecting the value of the company are occurring by default at relatively low levels within the hierarchy, with senior executives apparently unaware of them or their potential impact. The paper concludes that without a re-evaluation of the way mining projects are valued, to demand proven value optimisation from mining plans by boards and mining analysts, the industry will continue to deliver below average returns.

May 1, 2003

By Paul R. Terry

This paper presents a brief picture of the quality of coal produced in Eastern Canada for use in thermal generating stations. It describes, in particular, the characteristics of coals burned in six power plants -two in New Brunswick and four in Nova Scotia. Each station is dis-cussed in turn, and comments are made on the coals used therein with regards to origin and physical and chemical properties affecting station operation. A table of coal data shows, at a glance, the wide variation in the quality of coals received by these stations from producers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. "The promotion of improved coal quality for thermal generation can benefit our national economy." T HIS is the opening statement in a paper which was presented by Mr. D. A. Pirttinen at the Coal Division's Toronto meeting in April, 1960. In bringing the power engineer's viewpoint to the coal producers' attention, Mr. Pirttinen made a survey of utility steam plants operating in Canada, and the results of this survey formed the basis for his paper, which he titled: "Generating Station Coal Quality.

Jan 1, 1965

By T. Crivits, I. Bellemans, V. Cnockaert, K. Verbeken

It is well known that slag foaming can significantly complicate copper smelting processes. This is especially true for unpredictable events that generate large amounts of slag foam during a small period of time. These events are here referred to as eruptions and are typical for certain types of liquid bath furnaces such as modern top submerged lance (TSL) furnaces. A few authors already made the link between over- oxidation of the slag phase and slag foaming. In this work, the mechanism is studied in more detail and explained using the smelter chemistry and the behaviour of dynamic foam formation. Finally, the most influential parameters on the foaming behaviour of the process are presented. INTRODUCTION Copper remains one of the most important metals used in our modern society. In 2017, the annual amount of copper produced worldwide was about 23.5 million metric tons. This makes copper the third most produced metal in the world after steel and aluminium. The majority of this copper was produced by copper smelting, about 19 million metric tons, both from primary concentrate and secondary feed material as reported in ICSG’s World Copper Factbook 2018. In the past, copper smelting was mainly performed using Flash smelting, a technology developed before 1949 (Kojo, Jokilaakso & Hanniala, 2000). Nowadays, this type of smelter is being complemented by other smelter types such as ISASMELT and Ausmelt technologies. These are two types op smelter furnaces, based on the concept of a top submerged lance (TSL) furnace. These two technologies were both commercialized around 1990 (Arthur & Hunt, 2005). It is estimated by Wang et al. (2016) that at this time, both flash and TSL smelters contribute equally to the total amount of annually smelted copper. Flash smelting stays the most important technology for extracting copper from primary sources. TSL furnaces, on the other hand, are more suited than Flash smelters for the recovery of copper from secondary materials. This is because of the different ways that the feed material is inserted in both furnaces. In Flash smelters, the ore and fluxes needs to be fine and completely dry in order to be able to blow the mixture inside the burner area of the furnace. The feed material for TSL smelters show less constrains concerning humidity and particle size. The material is dropped from the top inside the molten bath. As a result, a more complex and flexible feed stream can be processed using TSL smelting (Wood, Hoang & Hughes, 2017). This feature will become more important in the future as primary copper sources gets more scarce and the need for a fully sustainable material cycle increases.

Jan 1, 2019

By Rene Klymowsky, Norbert Patzelt, Egbert Burchardt, Johann Knecht

"The challenge of ""ore bodies getting steadily harder and lower in grade"" was brought to light during the first oil crisis in the 70's. Shortly afterwards, HPGRs appeared on the scene with the promise of saving energy. This combined with developments in wear protection for the rolls ushered in a period of trade-off studies that considered the HPGR as an option to improve project economics or to even make projects feasible at all.Since then, applications of HPGRs at Cerro Verde (Freeport), PTFI Grasberg (Freeport), Mogalakwena (Anglo Platinum), Tarkwa (Goldfields), Boddington (Newmont), Penasquito (Goldcorp), and others have contributed to the creation of a formidable basket of operating experience. Collected through years of successful operation, this information has been used to validate design criteria, scale-up factors and establishing a clearer picture of what ""to do"" and what ""not to do"".This paper compares results from various mining operations using HPGRs in their processing plants. Some of the lessons learnt in different operating environments are reviewed in order to support proper implementation and operation of HPGR's. Some of the development programs that have been initiated to improve wear life of the tyres and to reduce overall operating costs are reviewed. It is timely to summarize today’s experience and analyse its implications for existing and new operations"

Jan 1, 2012

By M. Rylatt, E. Legault-Seguin, C. Mohns

"With energy costs increasing and ore grades diminishing, the role of preconcentration in hard-rock mining operations has gained greater interest. Dense medium separation is a process that can be conducted at particle sizes from 250 to 0.50 mm with high separation efficiency, depending on liberation characteristics of the valuable minerals. Pilot-plant case studies conducted at the SGS Lakefield site are presented, including mineral systems such as spodumene, sulfide-bearing gold ores, and complex sulfide ores. These case studies demonstrate that, for amenable ores, mass rejection of 20–60% is possible while maintaining recoveries of greater than 90%.RÉSUMÉ Au vu de la hausse des coûts liés à l’énergie et du déclin de la teneur des minerais, le rôle de la préconcentration dans les exploitations minières en roche dure présente un intérêt croissant. La séparation (ou concentration) en milieu dense est un processus pouvant être mené sur des calibres de grains de 250 à 0.50 mm avec un rendement élevé de séparation, en fonction des caractéristiques de libération des constituants des minéraux métallifères. Sont présentées dans cet article des études de cas menées dans des usines pilotes du site de Lakefield de SGS, lesquelles incluent des systèmes de minéraux tels que le spodumène, les minerais aurifères sulfurés et les minerais sulfurés complexes. Ces études de cas montrent que pour les minerais présentant les caractéristiques de libération appropriées, il est possible d’atteindre un rejet en masse de 20 à 60 %, tout en maintenant des récupérations supérieures à 90 %.INTRODUCTIONPreconcentration is the process of rejecting gangue minerals while ensuring recovery of valuable minerals prior to more intensive, downstream processing. Preconcentration has been practiced in the industry for many years, and is gaining greater interest as the industry copes with processing lower grade, more difficult ores, which typically require finer grind sizes and incur higher energy costs.The benefits of preconcentration are:• lower mining costs, which allows for nonselective mining;• lower process capital and operating costs (e.g., resulting from reduced grinding, flotation, and fines disposal stages);• increased ore reserves, which provides the potential to treat lower grade ore;• increased mine production without expansion of the existing plant or concentrator;• reduced overall tailings impoundment by converting the reject into a byproduct (e.g., underground backfill or aggregate);• improved efficiency of downstream processes (e.g., silica removal in electric arc furnace feed, removal of softer sliming minerals prior to grinding);• potential application to brownfield operations and greenfield projects; and• a “green” process option, which reduces processing energy consumption;– reduces mill feed;– increases stage metal recovery (higher grade feed);– increases mill metal output per tonne processed;– reduces surface plant, tailings dump, and tailings pond requirements because the plant has a small footprint and can be installed underground; and– can be applied to retreatment of old tailings dumps to recover metal values and reduce environmental impacts (e.g., dissolved metal runoff, acid drainage)."

Jan 1, 2017

By J. Kempken, R. Hagmann, C. -P. Reip, W. Hennig

The CSP technology symbolizes a highly productive process for the cost-effective production of steel grades with a range of sophisticated properties comprising both the inner quality of hot strip, its surface formation as well as the relating technological characteristics. Thanks to extensive development work undertaken during the last 15 years, the range of steel grades that can be produced was continuously expanded and the process technology optimized. The present paper describes the ongoing development work concerning the production of higher-strength, microalloyed pipe steels. The resulting hot strip, due to the associated thickness and the potential pipe diameters, is particularly suited for being processed to HFI-welded pipes. Based both on ferrite-pearlite as well as very fine-grained, ferrite-bainite hot-strip microstructures, strength levels of up to grade API X80 can be realized. It can be demonstrated that hot strip produced in a CSP plant has very good toughness values at temperatures down to -60°C and can even make application with required sour-gas resistance possible.

Jan 1, 2005

By H. R. Taylor

The history and development of this property is more or less familiar to nearly everyone connected with the mining industry, so that only a brief outline of the more important facts will be given in this article. In 1916, a small pilot mill was constructed by the British Columbia Copper Company at Copper Mountain, and during 1916 and 1917 test work was conducted to determine the possibility of concentrating the ore and also to work out a suitable flow-sheet. In the spring of 1917, the location of a mill site at Allen by, which is about 8,% miles from Copper Mountain, and near the Similkameen river, was decided on, and the designing of a 2,000-ton plant was then worked out by Bradley, Bruff and Labarthe. Early in 1918, the actual construction of the concentrator began, and, after considerable labour difficulties, it was completed in 1920. During this period of construction, the West Kootenay Power Company ran a 60,000-volt power line over from Greenwood, a distance of 102 miles, and also built a sub-station at Allenby to take care of the mine and mill. The concentrator was started up on October 20th, 1920, and ran until December 11th, 1920, a total of 18,354 tons of ore being milled. The results of this short period of operation were encouraging, but, due to tlie prevailing low price of copper and high wages, it was necessary to shut down until a more favourable time. During the latter half of 1923, some work was done on remodelling the mill. This work continued until January 8th, 1924, when it was suspended.

Jan 1, 1929

By P. D. R. Maltby

"The Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy has undertaken to host the XIV International Mineral Processing Congress to be held in Toronto at the Royal York Hotel from October 10 to 16, 1982. The theme of the Congress will be ""Worldwide Industrial Application of Mineral Processing Technology."" The program will include 10 sessions and numerous field trips to the different mining areas of Canada.For prospective authors, the preliminary program includes sessions on,1. Flotation - plant practice, equipment design, simulation, control and economics.2. Comminution - plant practice, equipment, design, simulation, control, wear, energy consideration and economics.3. Round table seminar on large grinding mills.4. Round table seminar on modern and future plant design.5. Mineral processes to recover precious metals.6. Mineral processes to recover energy minerals (coal, uranium).7. Mineral processes to recover industrial minerals.8. Round table seminar on the environment and ecology and how the different countries cope with associated problems.9. Materials handling with an emphasis on agglomeration techniques ereconentration methods, solid-liquid separation.10. Open session to deal with topic emerging from general demand."

Jan 1, 1980

By E. Dernedde

A few studies have suggested that the rate of adsorption of hydrogen fluoride on smelter grade alumina is determined by kinetic factors. However, no performance equation for dry scrubbers has appeared in the literature so far. Experimental data from a pilot dry scrubber with co-current flow were compared with results of kinetic models of adsorption, film diffusion and pore diffusion. The pore diffusion model was deemed the most appropriate. It was transformed into a performance equation for steady-state operations of dry scrubbers by the inclusion of the alumina recirculation. Operating results of industrial dry scrubbers with co-current flow were successfully evaluated by means of the performance equation. The average fluoride content of the alumina was also estimated by using the pore diffusion model.

Jan 1, 2011

By P. Chu, J. A. Finch

The formation of small bubbles in flotation is usually accomplished by the use of frothers, or sometimes is due to the presence of inorganic salts in the process water. The effective mechanism associated with the presence of these solutes is generally considered to be coalescence inhibition. However, recent work has demonstrated that the presence of frothers and salts also reduces the size of bubble at the initial formation stage. In this paper we adapt the same experimental setup to investigate the time that it takes for a bubble to form; for a known system power input, the energy to form a bubble can then be estimated from the time. The hypothesis is that the presence of frother and salt will reduce the time for a bubble to form, which can be interpreted as an added energy component being derived from the solute. Testing different types and concentrations of frothers and salts, the hypothesis is supported: the mechanical energy required to form a bubble decreases by about 10% in the presence of these solutes.

Jan 1, 2015

By Lizelle Glaner

An investigation was carried out by Mintek to investigate the influence of additions of gold to ?Fecraloy?, alloys based on Fe-Cr-Al. The aim was to try and improve the oxidation resistance of the ?Fecraloy? alloys at elevated temperatures over extended periods of time. The ?Fecraloy? alloys are very oxidation resistant alloys already employed in industry as substrates for metallic catalysts in auto-catalyst systems for high performance cars. Since their life and durability is limited by the slow, but steady, oxidation of the substrates, any change in the growth or stability of the oxides could be an improvement.

Oct 1, 2003

By A. R. Hekmat

Hypereutectic Al-Si alloys are used in applications that require high resistance to wear and corrosion, hardness and low coefficient of thermal expansion, To maximize the properties of these alloys, semi-solid processing can be utilized to modify the solidification structure of the primary silicon crystals as well as to reduce microsegregation and porosity, The transformation and spheroidization of primary Si crystals by shearing in the semi-solid state are not fully understood as they precipitate in the presence of other alloy phases, The objective of the present work is the determination the rheological characteristics of A390 (Al-17%Si-4,5%Cu-0.5%Mg) alloy using a Couette type (Haake RV12) viscometer and examining the microstructural evolution during continuous cooling and isothermal shear rate experiments, The effect of shear rate, solid fraction (temperature) and morphological evolution of the silicon crystals are investigated.

Jan 1, 2005

By K. Horikawa, S. Kitahata, H. Kobayashi

"It has been clarified that the Al-5%Mg alloys containing 200 mass ppm of sodium showed grain boundary (GB) fracture, even when tested at room temperature, as well as at high temperatures (~500°C). SEM/EDX study revealed that the GB fracture was associated with the segregation of sodium on grain boundaries of the Al-Mg base alloys. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) revealed that the GB fracture at room temperature of Al-Mg alloys was caused by sodium segregation in the solid state. It was also shown that the tendency of the GB fracture strongly depended on the heat treatment; the alloys after the solution heat treatment showed severe GB fracture compared with the alloys after the homogenizing treatment. Moreover, it was shown that the GB fracture at room temperature by sodium segregation was suppressed by the addition of bismuth or indium. The suppression of the GB fracture by the additional elements was believed to be the scavenging effects by forming the sodium bearing compounds in grains.INTRODUCTIONIt is widely known that Al-Mg base alloys containing high amount of magnesium(~5 mass%)show better workability at room temperature, while that the alloys show grain boundary (GB) embrittlement at higher temperatures ranging from 200 to 500°C, depending on grain size(Otsuka, 1984), sodium impurity level(Ransley, 1959, Okada, 1997, Horikawa, 2001)and testing strain rate(Yamada, 2012). In the case of coarse-grained Al-5%Mg alloys (~300 ?m), 2 mass ppm of sodium causes severe GB fracture around 300°C, however, the Al-5%Mg-2ppm alloy does not show GB fracture at room temperature. It has also been shown that the GB embrittlement caused by 2ppm of sodium was suppressed by the additional elements, such as bismuth (Talbot, 1995), antimony (Ueda, 1997) and indium (Horikawa, 2012). Basedon these facts, we have concluded that the GB embrittlement at higher temperatures of Al-Mg alloys is attributed to the synergy effects of GB segregation of atomic sodium and GB sliding. For the GB embrittlement mechanism of Al-Mg alloys, involvement of low melting point metallic phases has been pointed out (Lynch, 2002),since the GB embrittlement appeared only at high temperatures. Up to date, the effects of high amount of sodium addition more than 2 ppm on GB fracture were not fully investigated in Al-Mg alloys. In the present study, the effect of 100 ppm ordered sodium impurity on GB fracture of Al-5%Mg alloys was examined, together with the effect of another additional elements."

Jan 1, 2017

By J. -F. Blais, M. -O. Simonnot, P. Charbonnier, J. Mocellin, Université de Lorraine INRA, G. Mercier

"Huge amounts of air pollution scrubber sludge have been generated during ferromanganese production using blast furnace. These residues have been historically deposited in ponds near steel making plants. They are very rich in zinc, manganese and lead (5 to 40 %) and also contain aluminum and iron. Considering the market value of these metals, brownfield sites can now be used as secondary resources. These ponds also have to be cleaned up to meet the environmental regulations.We have developed a hydrometallurgical process to recover Zn, Mn and Pb in order to produce valuable compounds of Mn and Zn and recover the final Pb residue by pyrometallurgy. The Zn and Mn compounds need to be pure enough to be economically valuable. Batch laboratory tests were carried out to determine suitable selective leaching conditions. The investigated operating conditions were acid concentration, pulp density and temperature. Optimal conditions to maximize zinc extraction (100 %) and manganese extraction (95.9 %) were found using sulfuric acid and sodium metabisulfide. The final residue contained 14.8 to 23.8 % of Pb. Then, Zn was recovered in the form of ZnO or ZnS by precipitation and Zn metal by electrowinning, while Mn was recovered as MnCO3 with a fairly acceptable concentration of impurities.INTRODUCTIONFerromanganese has been produced by pyrometallurgy in much of Western Europe for centuries. Use of wet scrubber to remove pollutant and dust particles from gas stream was common for most of these operations. Those residues contain high concentration of Zn, Mn and Pb. They have been left to decant in settling ponds installed close to the steel production plants. They now constitute heavily contaminated artificial soils. Those sludges are so contaminated with Zn, Mn and Pb that they can be used for metal production. Currently, no method is available to decontaminate these residues and recover Zn, Mn and Pb. Therefore, an approach considering these brownfield sites as secondary resource is in development. Doing so would achieve two goals, decontaminate the site and produce metals.. (Huot, Faure, Biache, Lorgeoux, Simonnot, & Morel, 2014a; Huot, Simonnot, Marion, Yvon, De Donato, & Morel, 2012; Huot, Simonnot, Watteau, Marion, Yvon, De Donato, & Morel, 2014b)."

Jan 1, 2016

By S. Banisi, J. A. Finch, A. R. Laplante

"A technique for on-line simultaneous estimation of gas and solids holdup (volume fraction), based on a combination of conductivity and pressure difference measurements, is proposed and tested in a laboratory flotation column (10cm in diameter and 447cm in height). Fundamental concepts underlying this technique and the effect of relevant parameters are discussed. In the studied range, 3-30 %v/v gas holdup and 2-18 % v/v solids holdup, experimental results showed good agreement between the estimated and actual holdup values (as determined by an isolating technique). The relative accuracy of the solids holdup estimation increased when solids density or solids concentration increased. Frequent re-calibration of pressure transducers was found necessary for accurate phase holdup estimation.IntroductionGas holdup is a key parameter in controlling the performance of flotation columns. For example, flotation rate is affected by bubble size and gas rate both of which, in turn, affect gas holdup. Moreover, gas holdup also determines the slurry residence time which indicates a direct influence of gas holdup on recovery.Gas holdup determination has been the focus of many studies (e.g., Castillejos, 1986; Marchese et al., 1992). Some of the techniques which have been used are given in Table 1."

Jan 1, 1994

By A. Ehsani

"Seas and oceans constitute about 70% of the earth’s surface. They contain an enormous stock of various mineral resources such as sedimentary (marine placers), massive sulfide ore deposits, manganese nodules and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. Sea and ocean floor ore deposits could well contribute to the meeting of ever-rising demand for raw materials in the metal industry. In this regard, more research and development in science and technology appear to be required to ensure maximum benefit from the mineral resources of seas and oceans. Since the 1960s, a variety of mineral and metallurgical processes have been studied and developed to deal with marine ores and to extract metals such as gold, nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, tin, platinum group metals (PGM), zirconium, thorium, etc.In marine environments, there are many parameters which can affect the selection of the mineral and metallurgical processes. These include the extent and grade of the deposit, mineralogical and chemical properties of the deposit, and physical properties of minerals present with particular reference to particle size distribution and mineral liberation size.In this paper, we briefly review the latest trends in processing and extraction of marine mineral resources. Mineral processing technology is mostly applied for recovery of precious metals i.e. gold and PGM, in particular, from marine placers. In general, pre-treatment (sizing, classification, dewatering), gravity concentration techniques (shaking tables, spirals, jigs, etc.,), flotation, magnetic, and electrostatic separation are the options for enrichment of marine placer ore deposits. In the case of massive sulfides, manganese nodules/cobalt-rich crusts, hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical methods (as proven technological methods) can be exploited for extraction of metals from concentrates after physical separation or directly from marine ores. The hydrometallurgical treatments involve acid (e.g., sulfurichydrochloric) and alkaline (e.g., ammonia) leaching with different reducing agents and pre-treatments such as roasting. Alternatively, pyrometallurgical treatments involve mostly smelting, chlorination and segregation processes."

Jan 1, 2016