Flotation Machine

Application range of the flotation machine

Froth flotation has become one of the most important mineral processing methods. Almost all mineral resources can be floated by the FTM Machinery floatation machine.

• Ferrous metal ores: metals mainly concentrate iron and manganese, such as hematite, zincite, ilmenite, etc.
• Precious metal ores: metals mainly concentrate gold and silver.
• Non-ferrous metal ores: copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, nickel, molybdenum, antimony, etc.
• Sulfide minerals: galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, chalcocite, pyrite, molybdenite, nickel pyrite, etc.
• Oxide minerals: malachite, scheelite, heteropolar ore, cassiterite, wolframite, etc.
• Soluble saline minerals: potassium salt, rock salt, etc.
• Non-metallic saline minerals: fluorite, apatite, barite, etc.
• Non-metallic minerals and silicate minerals: coal, coal slurry, graphite, sulfur, diamond, quartz, mica, feldspar, beryl, spodumene, clay minerals, etc.

Structure of the flotation machine

The flotation machine is mainly composed of the flotation cell, mixing device, aeration device, mineralized foam discharging device, motor and so on.

Working principle of the flotation machine

The V-belt of the motor drives the impeller to rotate, generating a centrifugal effect to form a negative pressure.

On the one hand, sufficient air is inhaled to mix with the slurry. On the other hand, the slurry is mixed with the reagents, so that the mineral can adhere to the refined foams and then mineralized foams are formed after floating to the surface of the slurry. The useful foams are scraped out by the scraper by adjusting the height of the gate.

Features of FTM Machinery flotation machine

FTM Machinery is a professional flotation machine manufacturer. It has strict quality requirements on the design of the equipment and a mature and excellent flotation machine production process.

There are three types of FTM Machinery flotation machines, including XJK type flotation machine, SF type flotation machine and JJF type flotation machine.

Characteristics of FTM Machinery XJK floatation machine

• The ore pulp begins to fully contact with the air at the impeller cavity, which shortens the mineralization time and increases the flotation speed.
• The suspended stator is composed of radial plates, which can not only prevent the rotational flow of the slurry, but also make the mineralized bubbles rise vertically to the foam stable area.
• The U-shaped tank can keep the liquid level stable. The upper section of the tank continues to expand and the bottom is semi-circular, the design of which conforms to the characteristics of fluid dynamics and can avoid the sinking of coarse ore particles with large effective volume.

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Characteristics of FTM Machinery SF floatation machine

• Self-priming slurry and no foam pump is required.
• The impeller, with double-sided tilt-back blades, can realize double circulation of slurry in the tank.
• The gap between the impeller and the cover plate is large and the increase of the gap due to wear has little effect on the air inflow.
• The front-tipping tank has small dead angles and foams move fast in it.
• The slurry in the cells is subjected to up and down double circulation in a fixed flow mode, which is beneficial to the suspension of coarse-grained minerals.

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Characteristics of FTM Machinery JJF flotation machine

• Wide range of particle size and high recovery rate.
• The large gap between the impeller and the stator is conducive to the mixing and dispersion of air and ore pulp.
• The slurry circulation volume is large, which is beneficial to the mineralization of the ore, reagent and air.
• It can be combined with SF type flotation machine to form a flotation unit.

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Advantages of the flotation method

• It is more efficient than other beneficiation methods in processing fine-grained refractory lean ores (combined with other methods).
• Strong adaptability and wide application fields.
• Simple operation and low energy consumption.

Flotation procedure

Pulp preparation

The purpose of grinding, grading and slurry mixing is to obtain liberated mineral particles and slurry with suitable concentration.

Pulp conditioning

The purpose is to adjust and control the physical and chemical properties of the phase interface, to promote the selective adhesion of bubbles and different mineral particles and to separate each other.

Aeration flotation

After the prepared pulp being introduced into the flotation machine, a large number of dispersed bubbles are generated by the aeration and stirring of the flotation machine.

The ore particles with good floatability are attached to the bubbles to form mineralized foams. While those with poor floatability cannot be attached to the bubbles but remain in the cells, and are discharged from the flotation machine as tailings.

Factors affecting the flotation process

Mineral size

Too large ore particles often cannot float because their quality exceeds the floating capacity of the bubbles.

The upper limit of the floatable particle size of minerals is different. For example, for sulfide minerals, it is generally 0.2–0.25 mm; 0.25–0.3 mm for non-sulfide minerals. For some non-metallic minerals with low density (such as coal), it can also be increased.

However, too fine particles (such as less than 0.01 mm) are also detrimental to flotation.

Pulp concentration

The adjustment of slurry before flotation is an important operation in the flotation process, including the determination of slurry concentration and the selection of slurry adjustment methods, etc.

The slurry concentration refers to the content of solid ore particles in the slurry. The general principles for choosing the pulp mixing method are:

• For flotation of minerals with large density and coarse particle size, the thicker pulp is often used; otherwise, the thinner pulp is used.
• The thick pulp is used in roughing and thinner pulp is used in concentration. The pulp of the scavenging is affected by roughing and generally not be controlled separately.

The addition and adjustment of reagents

Pulp temperature

There are two main requirements for adjusting pulp temperature:

1. 1 The nature of the reagents. Some reagents can exert their effective effects only under certain temperatures.
2. 2 Some special processes require to increase pulp temperature in order to achieve the purpose of mineral separation.

Water quality

The flotation process is carried out in the aqueous medium, but the water quality used in the flotation process varies with time and place. According to different situations, the water used in flotation can be divided into soft water (the most used one), hard water, saltwater, backwater, etc.

Flotation flowsheet

The course of slurry flow through each operation in the flotation process is called the flowsheet. It mainly discusses three issues: the number of sections in the flotation flowsheet, the dressing order of useful minerals and the internal structure of the flowsheet.

Number of process sections

In order to ensure the full dissociation of useful minerals and to prevent the ore from being over-crushed as much as possible, there are several types of flotation process commonly used: one-stage, two-stage and multi-stage grinding and flotation process.

Ore dressing order

The flotation process of polymetallic ores has four basic forms in terms of the ore dressing order: preferential flotation process, bulk flotation process, partial bulk preferential flotation process, iso-flotability flotation, etc.

Internal structure of flotation flowsheet

After the flowsheet is determined, the internal structure of each circuit must be further determined, that is, the number of roughing, concentration and scavenging within each flotation circuit and the processing problems of the middlings.

Customer cases of FTM Machinery flotation machine

FTM Machinery flotation machine is widely welcomed by customers all over the world because of its excellent quality, high-cost performance and perfect after-sale service.

Copper mine flotation case in the U.S.

Copper mine flotation case in the U.S.

Copper in a copper mine in the United States mainly occurs in various copper-containing sulfide minerals such as chalcopyrite, chalcocite, covellite and blue chalcocite.

According to the ore characteristics, under the grinding fineness of 65% of -0.074 mm, with BKZ as the collector and CaO as the regulator, FTM Machinery adopts a process of single-stage roughing, two-stage scavenging and two-stage concentration.

Tungsten ore flotation case in Bolivia

Country	Ore type	Grade of raw tungsten ore	Grade of tungsten ore concentration	Tungsten recovery rate
Bolivia	Tungsten ore	0.2%	21.20%	>65%

In the process, FTM Machinery adopts a combination of high-efficiency new chelating collector GYB and auxiliary collector FW, and at the same time uses the characteristics of the high recovery rate of the spiral chute to process the concentrate.

Copper-lead-zinc ore flotation case in Peru

Country	Ore type	Copper recovery rate	Lead recovery rate	Zinc recovery rate
Peru	Copper-lead-zinc ore	85.2%	50.4%	87.3%

Through detailed technological process and condition test, FTM Machinery determined that copper and lead can float with single-stage roughing and scavenging; copper and lead can be separated by single-stage roughing, concentration and scavenging; lead can float through two-stage roughing, single-stage concentration and scavenging; zinc can float through two-stage roughing, three-stage concentration and scavenging.

The final determination of the best flotation separation scheme is iso-flotability flotation of copper and lead—regrinding and dressing of copper and lead—lead and zinc flotation in turn.

FAQ about flotation machines

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