Column flotation monitoring based on electrical capacitance volume tomography: A preliminary study

Abstract

A preliminary study of column flotation monitoring process using electrical capacitance volume tomography (ECVT) was conducted. ECVT was one of the monitoring systems which based on the capacitance measurement. It was used to understand the phenomenon that occurs inside the column in a three-dimensional (3-D) image. A linear back projection (LBP) algorithm technique was used to reconstruct the 3-D ECVT images from all measurement data obtained in this study. As a preliminary study, the effect of gas injection in the two-phase (liquid and gas) system was conducted. This study is conducted to assess the possibility of ECVT system in the monitoring of column flotation process. The experiments were conducted by using column flotation with 5 cm diameter and 150 cm height in which a sparger was installed at the bottom of column to inject air inside the column. 32-CH rectangular ECVT sensor was installed at 13 cm above the sparger and placed around the column. The gas injection variations used were 2-7 l/min with interval 1 l/min and all experiments were conducted at room temperature. Based on the signal and image analysis, the signals and 3-D ECVT images showed differences when the gas injection was varied. An increase in gas injection will decrease the fluctuation of signal intensity which correlates to the 3-D ECVT images. Average signals obtained by ECVT when given gas injection variations were in the range of 440.09 to 453.62 mV from high to low gas injection. Based on these results, ECVT has a prospect as an imaging tool to monitor the column flotation process. And also, hopefully, based on the analysis of 3-D images generated by ECVT system, the metallurgical performance would be analyzed in the further researches.