Estudo comparativo entre equipamentos de flotação

Abstract

The importance of flotation as mineral concentration process has led to the development and improvement of flotation machines, in order to make this more and more efficient operation in production and economic terms. In this way, the work performed a conceptual review of the ore concentration by flotation, highlighting the importance of this process, carrying out a survey of major equipment and how operating variables affect this unit operation, taking into account the main characteristics of equipment in separability dynamics, performance and so on. In the studies reviewed, we can see how the hydrodynamics of the equipment and the size distribution of generated bubbles become important variables in the sequence of events that lead to the flotation of mineral particles. The study shows the equipment as flotation columns are more suited to the treatment of fine particle size of ultrafine minerals. Moreover, the use of large volumes of cells has become a trend, due to economic considerations favor this effect device via the scale. Pneumatic cells since they are devices with no moving parts and low residence time of the particles, reduced size of equipment that have low cost infrastructure compared to other equipment.