Operational optimization of copper flotation process based on the weighted Gaussian process regression and index-oriented adaptive differential evolution algorithm

Concentrate copper grade(CCG)is one of the important production indicators of copper flotation processes,and keeping the CCG at the set value is of great significance to the economic benefit of copper flotation industrial processes.This paper addresses the fluctuation problem of CCG through an operational optimization method.Firstly,a density-based affinity propagationalgorithm is proposed so that more ideal working condition categories can be obtained for the complex raw ore properties.Next,a Bayesian network(BN)is applied to explore the relationship between the operational variables and the CCG.Based on the analysis results of BN,a weighted Gaussian process regression model is constructed to predict the CCG that a higher prediction accuracy can be obtained.To ensure the predicted CCG is close to the set value with a smaller magnitude of the operation adjustments and a smaller uncertainty of the prediction results,an index-oriented adaptive differential evolution(IOADE)algorithm is proposed,and the convergence performance of IOADE is superior to the traditional differential evolution and adaptive differential evolution methods.Finally,the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed methods are verified by the experiments on a copper flotation industrial process.

Hydrophobic-surface of copper from converter slag in the flotation system

The converter slag from a smeltery in Daye contains 2.01% copper.The floatability of copper has a significant influence on the flotation of converter slag.Flotation tests,contact angle tests and FTIR were conducted to assess the influences of pH and different flotation concentrators on its hydrophobic process,mechanism and flotation.The results show that since chemisorptions are formed on the surface,hydrophobicity of copper is highly enhanced by xanthate,butylamine dithiophosphate and Z-200.The hydrophobic-surface of copper becomes worse with low recovery in strong acid and alkali situation.When pH value is 10,butylamine dithiophosphate and butyl xanthate are used as the mixed-collector,the grade of copper is 40.01%and that of tailings is 0.37%.

Estimation of Copper and Molybdenum Grades and Recoveries in the Industrial Flotation Plant Using the Artificial Neural Network

In this paper, prediction of copper and molybdenum grades and their recoveries of an industrial flotation plant are investigated using the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) model. Process modeling has done based on 92 datasets collected at different operational conditions and feed characteristics. The prominent parameters investigated in this network were pH, collector, frother and F-Oil concentration, size percentage of feed passing 75 microns, moisture content in feed, solid percentage, and grade of copper, molybdenum, and iron in feed. A multilayer perceptron neural network, with 10:10:10:4 structure (two hidden layers), was used to estimate metallurgical performance. To obtain the optimal hidden layers and nodes in a layer, a trial and error procedure was done. In training and testing phases, it achieved quite correlations of 0.98 and 0.93 for Copper grade, of 0.99 and 0.92 for Copper recovery, of 0.99 and 0.92 for Molybdenum grade and of 0.99 and 0.94 for Molybdenum recovery prediction, respectively. The proposed neural network model can be applied to determine the most beneficial operational conditions for the expected Copper and Molybdenum grades and their recovery in final concentration of the industrial copper flotation process.

Recovery of Copper and Cobalt from Converter Slag with a New Flotation Method Using H_(2）S

In this study,two different samples were obtained from Küre Copper factory.It was determined that the samples contain:the sample of K.C.F.(Küre Copper Factory),0.70%Cu and 0.5%Co.This sample was firstly grounded at-100 mesh dimension.Flotation was done according to previously obtained optimum flotation conditions.The flotation yield of Cu and Co in concentrate phase was found to be low by collective flotation.Even when the samples were grounded at-160 mesh,no change was observed in the flotation result.Especially,Co could not float under the flotation conditions of the non-sulfurized samples.There,a new flotation method was applied which was not applied until now.For this aim,the samples were firstly sulphurised under the steam of H2S+H2O.By this method,the amount of Cu and Co in the samples get rich.According to the obtained results,the optimum reactions for flotation and sulphurization were determined.In the first sulphurization conditions for the sample of K.C.F.,the yield of flotation for the Co and Co were found to be 98.27%and 68.07%,respectively.The results indicate that Cu can be floated at low yield in the original samples.On the other hand,Co cannot float under these conditions.