FLSmidth® nextSTEP™ rotor/stator design for forced-air flotation technology

[Music] the innovation of this new rotor takes practice 2007 in that year half of this started to fund a research team at Virginia Tech for advanced the flotation technology another time I was involved in a project as a PhD student the professors and students another team have different background which include mining and mineral engineering experimental fluid mechanics safety and a mechanical engineering we evaluated the new ideas by theoretical analysis CFD hydrodynamics measurements and metallurgical tests we optimize the number of the rotor blades and also designed a special theta 2 pi up with the rotor which push the performance to a new height [Music] the rotor is the key part of a convention of rotation machine basically the rotor has four functions solely the suspension power generation higher dispersion and the bubble particle Keynesian not working how to make the four functions work together perfectly the secret is the rotor configuration this is actually a fluid mechanics problem the ship ever played affects the flow characteristics where the flow characteristics determined the performance of the four functions the ship of our new rotor is specially designed to get favorite streams in the tank for example the outcoming jet is wider to get a better turbulence and mixing and the turbulence is joining us to enhance the bubble particle attachment while it is not too strong to make the bubble particle aggregated detach [Music] when we talk about the flotation performance we mean the recovery rate the concentrator grid and also the energy input this daughter has been tested in life scale machines and the Pinal skirmishes and full-scale machines we see significant improvements are all the parameters the fall simulator provide an increased flow pattern from the rotors and a cross flow pattern between the stator veins a number of stator mechanisms were tested with and without sloths and regardless of the shape of the faders the addition of sloths increased the flotation performance the difference in Staters with and without loss can be seen in CFE and hydrodynamics lab testing [Music] the next myth Seder was designed to mirror the profiles and accept rotor over 300 rotor stator combinations were tested in lab and the conclusions of these tests proved that the combination of the profiles of nextstep rotor and stator gave superior flotation recovery at a greatly decreased power consumption during these lab tests it was also found that if the gap between the rotor in the stator was decreased and the shear in this zone increased it greatly affected flotation recovery [Music] slow patterns were simulated using CFD analysis paint tests in the six cubic meter sail and hydrodynamic testing in the lab CFD and the paint tests confirmed that the Nick step rotors gave a wider flow jet on the vertical plane of the stator blades all flow visualizations confirms that the faders with the Schloss gave a wider flow pattern and a cross pattern between the stator blades [Music] FL Schmitt conducted extensive slipstream studies at on rougher tails at a copper concentrator using a 1.5 cubic metre float cell a postman also conducted pilot testing using an artificial feed on one point five and six cubic meter cell here at the new Research Center in Salt Lake City Utah [Music] most importantly the results agreed with the pilot-scale testing we were able to show that the same designs outperform the other designs and that we were able to show benefits and power recovery and grade using a highly controlled test procedure here at the Research Center with the next step mechanism customers will be able to achieve higher recovery and lower power consumption than they've ever achieved with any other force their flotation machine [Music] the existing technologies customers haven't been achieving their optimal floatation performance and they contain too much an energy cost with the next steps mechanism power consumption with the decrease and location profitability recovery will improve the next step mechanism is our standard replacement for rebuild of forced air flotation mechanisms customers looking for improved recovery and lower operating costs this mechanism will be suited for that with the lower and lower head grades that we're seeing these days and more complex in a neurology customer needs to be looking for improved technology that's going to lower their operating costs while still maintaining an increase in their recovery the next step mechanism is technology [Music]