- Title
- Measuring grade-recovery and partition curves of dense minerals by batch fractionation in a laboratory-scale REFLUX™ Classifier
- Creator
- Hunter, D. M.; Iveson, S. M.; Galvin, K. P.
- Relation
- XXVIII International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC 2016). Proceedings of the XXVIII International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC 2016) (Quebec City, Canada 11-15 September, 2016) p. 3934-3942
- Publisher
- Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Sink-float analysis is often used to obtain yield-ash and density partition curves in the coal industry. These provide a valuable tool for evaluating the performance of a separation process. However, for dense minerals, obtaining complete grade-recovery and density partition curves is more difficult due to the lack of heavy liquids available with the required densities. This paper examines a potential solution to this problem which is to perform batch fractionation of mineral samples in a laboratory-scale REFLUX™ Classifier using high viscosity fluidising liquids. The REFLUX™ Classifier is a gravity separation unit consisting of a system of parallel inclined channels positioned above a vertical fluidised bed. Operated in semi-batch mode, a charge of particles is fluidised from below and particles up to a certain density are elutriated from the top of the system. The fluidisation rate is then increased incrementally to fractionate the sample at progressively increasing densities. Previous work by Hunter et al. (2014) and Iveson et al. (2015) has shown that this method provides excellent agreement with yield-ash and partition curves for coal, especially when glycerol solutions are used as the fluidising liquid. This approach has now been extended to obtain the grade-recovery and density partition curves of high density mineral samples. This method has the potential to provide the minerals industry with an effective tool to evaluate the performance of unit operations separating at cut points higher than the available heavy liquids.
- Subject
- REFLUX™ Classifier; density fractionation; sink-float; semi-batch; viscous liquid; density separation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1420550
- Identifier
- uon:37606
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781926872292
- Language
- eng
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