Iron ore concentrate in flotation process beneficiation plant, the key accountabilities of flotation workers are that ensure the maximum recovery of valuable minerals, reduce metal loss as much as possible, ensure concentrate quality meet the prescribed standard, avoid operating error that will cause personal injury and equipment safety accidents, improve equipment availability, reduce drug consumption and reduce ore beneficiation cost. The workers also must do frequent operation, frequent adjustment, frequent observation, frequent admeasurement and cooperations between each post.
Frequent observation and admeasurement
Observing the flotation foam changes is an important basic skill of flotation work , that is according to the flotation process, observing bubble size, color, mineralization degree, toughness and crisp, luster, outline, thickness extent, fluidity, sound and other physical properties. Bubble “virtual and actual” is a amount reflection of attached ore grains on the bubble surface. Generally, the bubbles in rougher flotation and fine flotation are more burliness. The bubbles in scavenging are more hollow. Flotation workers should watch the bubbles and judge and adjust timely.
The size of the bubble is relate to mineralization level. The large bubbles yield to shake and are easy to crack. The small bubbles effect the flotation and make the concentrate grade hard to be guaranteed. When in color metal sulfide mineral flotation, the more strong the bubbles metallic luster is, the more better. When tailing appears metallic luster, the flotation is not normal and the tailings has serious loss. The thin and thick of foam layer is related to selected raw ore grade, the amount of blowing agent, pulp density and ore properties.
Usually, the foam layer in rougher flotation and scavenging is more thinner and the foam layer in fine flotation is more thicker. In daily production operation, flotation worker will adjust and control according to the work experience. The sound is to say the brush sound when the bubbles are scraped into the bubble slots by scraper blade. The sound is more serious, the more useful mineral grains in bubbles and the higher concentrate grade. The flotation worker often should pay more attention.
The size of the bubble is relate to mineralization level. The large bubbles yield to shake and are easy to crack. The small bubbles effect the flotation and make the concentrate grade hard to be guaranteed. When in color metal sulfide mineral flotation, the more strong the bubbles metallic luster is, the more better. When tailing appears metallic luster, the flotation is not normal and the tailings has serious loss. The thin and thick of foam layer is related to selected raw ore grade, the amount of blowing agent, pulp density and ore properties. Usually, the foam layer in rougher flotation and scavenging is more thinner and the foam layer in fine flotation is more thicker. In daily production operation, flotation worker will adjust and control according to the work experience. The sound is to say the brush sound when the bubbles are scraped into the bubble slots by scraper blade. The sound is more serious, the more useful mineral grains in bubbles and the higher concentrate grade. The flotation worker often should pay more attention.
Frequent operation and adjustment
In flotation process, we can do appropriate adjustments in drug supply according to the change of the bubble. What’s more, adjusting the bubble that scraped out and controlling the flow velocity of the pulp are more often used. The amount of scraped bubble can be adjusted by controlling the mineral slurry surface. The mine slurry surface adjustment, can be achieved by controlling the amount of fed ores. In order to avoid bubble concentrate into tailings area and ore pulp in chute accumulate, the discharging speed of pulp must be paid more attention to ensure the appropriate height of ore liquid surface in chute and reduce metal loss in tailings.
There are many reasons will make the tailings grade in chute increased and influence the technical index, such as low mineral slurry surface, not make use of the flotation slot, reduced flotation time, reduced blowed bubble. On the contrary, high mineral slurry surface, full use of the flotation slot, bubbles are soon blowed out, can make the time that bubbles are in the chute shorted and sometimes the ore pulp will be blowed out, so that bubble or ore pulp will overflow and the concentrate quality will reduce.
The daily work of flotation worker are to observe bubble status, adjust the mine slurry surface in flotation machine. Modulating control the tailings gate should give priority to stable. Upon most occasions, fine adjustment is done to avoid changing radically. Usually observe the agents adding to prevent agents shortage. Necessary adjustments must be done in allowed fluctuation of operation specifications. Un-timing inspection can be done in fine concentrate grade observation and washing method is used for test. When blowing bubbles, the ore pulp should be removed at first. Foam layer smooth thickness should be kept. The whole class must blow the bubbles without interrupt. If there are special change in concentrate grade, the worker must find the change timely. Aeration quantity of flotation machine can be adjusted to adapt to the foam layer thickness requirements.
Strengthen cooperation and contact between workers
Flotation concentration is an important process conditions in flotation process work. Fineness of ground ores must achieve requirements of useful metal mineral basic monomer separation. The ores grain size is uniform. Both too thick and too fine will affect the concentrate quality. The thick grains have large weight so the thick grains are not easy to bubble polymerization and have high drop force. So if we want to get thick grains by flotation, some special measures are needed, such as, aeration quantity in flotation machine should be increased to make large bubble; increasing the flow rate of ore pulp and pulp density; adopting effective flotation reagents for the large grains need large setting strength.
In beneficiation plant, the existence of super fine clay (less than 0.01 mm) is adverse for flotation. In ore grinding work, over-grinding will produce the clay so that it should be prevented. Due to the existence of fine clay, concentrate quality is affected. Ore clay is very fine and has large specific surface area. The clay can absorb a lot of flotation reagents so that the flotation reagents concentration is reduced. Increasing the reagent rate can destroy the selectivity of flotation process.
For the fine mud flocculation effect, parts of the gangue fine clay get together with useful mineral fine clay to form floccules, which will come into the ore concentrate and influence concentrate quality. The flotation workers must often contact with grinding miners and always keep grinding situation. According to the requirements of the flotation, the flotation workers inform grinding miners to adjust at any time and ensure the grinding fineness and flotation concentration.