The recovery achieved in a flotation process is a function of both the characteristics of the feed stream and the operating conditions within the flotation cell. In this paper, the flotation characteristics of the streams within the Red Dog lead cleaning circuit have been compared by floating each of them in a laboratory flotation cell keeping the operating conditions of each test constant.
The results of these experiments have been compared both graphically and via the use of modelling techniques. This comparison shows both in a qualitative and quantitative manner that the inherent stream property which produces the resulting flotation behaviour can be assumed to be conserved around the Red Dog lead cleaning circuit. In other words, the total mass of each floatability component in the feed streams was shown to equal the total mass of that same floatability component in the product streams for each node in the process.
Using these principles and a flotation modelling algorithm which has been developed at the University of Cape Town, the flotation distribution of the feed to the Red Dog cleaning circuit was calculated. This distribution coupled with the effect of the operating variables within each flotation. cell has been used to effectively model the Red Dog lend cleaning circuit.