The effects of stage recovery uncertainty in the performance of concentration circuits

Optimizing Flotation Circuit Recovery by Effective Stage Arrangements: A Case Study

“…These studies have shown that the flotation circuit configuration is not very sensitive to stage recovery [9,19]. The overall output suggests that choosing the best flotation circuit is not sensitive to the stage recovery, and as a result, only approximate values of the recovery can be used to select the optimal flotation circuit [6,9,20]. This paper using simple numerical examples shows that the assumption of circuit configuration insensitivity to the stage recovery is not correct in all cases.…”

“…Most of the existing flotation models are empirical [5], and they are not capable of predicting circuit behavior based on operating conditions and circuit configuration. In other words, accurate first-order models are difficult to use in flotation circuit design using optimization [6]. Even the use of a first order kinetic model can be a challenge when many separation stages or abundant species are considered.…”

“…This assumption may be very simplistic, but is commonly used in industrial operations [8]. Despite extensive researches had been done on the effect of design and operational parameters on the efficiency of flotation circuits, very few publications can be found in the literature that discusses the role of stage recovery on the overall circuit recovery and the effect of circuit configuration on the stage recovery [6,7,9,10]. Some previous studies have evaluated the circuit configuration with circuit analysis method assuming the same recovery in various flotation stages [7,11,12].…”

“…The present study is going to compare and evaluate the configuration of flotation circuits, assuming that an identical recovery in stages is an acceptable assumption and the results are valid for non-identical stage recovery. Recently, the effect of stage recovery on the overall circuit recovery has been investigated from two aspects of sensitivity and uncertainty analyses [6,7,9,17,18]. These studies have shown that the flotation circuit configuration is not very sensitive to stage recovery [9,19].…”

A strategy for the identification of optimal flotation circuits

“…Thus, several studies have been developed to evaluate the effects of uncertainties in flotation process design (Montenegro et al, 2013(Montenegro et al, , 2015Jamett et al, 2015;Cisternas et al, 2015). These studies have noted that the optimal flotation circuit structure is not very sensitive to the stage recovery values.…”