Flotation process controls

In order to maintain profitability in the face of challenging commodity prices, it is imperative to improve the efficiency of your existing assets. This means ensuring smooth plant operation, developing a flexible process that can cope with ore changes, maintaining equipment reliability, and minimizing start-up losses. Furthermore, high personnel turnover can make it challenging to retain core skills and competencies in your operation. Many sites also face challenges with the high cost of consumables and the increasing demand for more comprehensive production reports.

Effective, automated, and integrated control can help to solve all of these challenges, while also minimizing the risk of production disturbances and downtime, and supporting compliance with strict health, safety, and environmental standards. It provides you with tools to identify disturbances and stabilize your process, and also get a clear overview of your production.
We have a proven track record in metallurgical process automation that stretches back over 30 years, and our flexible solutions focus in particular on ease of use, practicality, and component compatibility. Put simply, they are designed to secure maximum production performance for your specific application.

We can help you automate brownfield operations cost-efficiently and with minimal downtime through a holistic but modular approach that covers all levels of automation and services for all concentrator processes. A higher level of automation reduces process disturbances and fluctuations, resulting in increased capacity and improved metallurgical performance.

Regulatory controls for flotation cells

The following basic set of instruments enables the minimum level of flotation control and is recommended before upgrading to advanced control methods:

• Flotation cell slurry level control
• Flotation cell air feed control
• Basic auxiliary controls, comprising:
  1. Pump sump level control
  2. Pump start-up sequence
  3. Feed-forward control methods (tailored to process)

Advanced controls for flotation cells

Once the basic set of automation controls are in place, we can provide advanced control solutions that focus on process optimization and stabilization, such as:

• Froth speed control
• Grade-recovery control
• Ore-specific grade-recovery control

Regulatory and advanced controls for reagents

We offer two solutions for basic reagent control: gravity controlled dosing and pressure-controlled dosing. Once the basic instrumentation is in place, additional methods such as ratio control and pH control can be implemented.

For plants with regulatory control in place, we offer the Outotec Chena^® system, which controls reagent dosing based on electrochemical slurry measurements. Stabilizing and optimizing your process through automation

1. Manual operation:  The point at which the site is operating on the site-specific grade-recovery curve will determine the flotation performance.

2. Stabilization: With improved flotation controls, the flotation circuit can be operated with tighter safety margins – i.e. the process can be run closer to the minimum grade limit.

3. Optimization:  Improved process conditions (less turbulence, consistent drainage and entrainment, more constant mass pull, and so on) enable higher recovery with the same grade.

Automation systems are tailored to the requirements of each individual plant operation and include installation and start-up support services. The delivery scope can include:

1. Basic process controls:

• Basic instrumentation and electrification
• A local or distributed control system
• Analyzers and sampling systems
• Automatic reagent dosing system

2. Advanced measurements, controls, and reporting

• Froth cameras
• Reporting and data analysis
• Advanced process controls
• Advanced level controls
• Air feed optimization
• Froth speed control and grade-recovery optimization