Flotation kinetics of coal in the Inflatable Cyclonic Flotation Column

Abstract

This paper mainly investigates the flotation kinetics of coal in the flotation column. The flotation tests were carried out in the Inflatable Cyclonic Flotation Column (ICFC) which consists of two parts, i.e., the inflatable flotation unit and the cyclone flotation zone. The flotation rates of −0.5 + 0.25 mm, −0.25 + 0.074 mm, and −0.5 + 0 mm size fractions of coal were obtained respectively with different aeration rates. Based on the first-order kinetics model, the fitting parameters of four kinds of traditional dynamic models for the experimental data were obtained by the MATLAB software. In addition, a new flotation kinetics model was developed to match the column flotation result. It was found that the flotation rate obviously increased with the increasing aeration rate independent of the size fraction. The second-order kinetics model was suitable for the −0.25 + 0.074 mm and −0.5 + 0 mm size fraction of coal. For the −0.5 + 0.25 mm size fraction, the correlation coefficient (R2) of the new model was close to 1 and the Sum of Squares for Error (SSE) was close to 0, indicating that the new model fitted the flotation result very well.