Size Matters: Development of a laboratory fluidised bed flotation device – the JKHFmini

Speaker: Lizette Verster

Abstract: Coarse particle flotation can significantly benefit the minerals processing industry through energy savings in comminution and increased plant throughput. Fluidised bed flotation has demonstrated the ability to recover coarse particles during flotation. However, the smallest fluidised bed flotation units require relatively large samples for testing new ores. The ease and confidence with which laboratory testing can be completed will determine the speed with which fluidised bed flotation technology will be adopted in industry. Not being able to easily and rapidly test this technology could result in delayed adoption. The JKHFmini is a laboratory fluidised bed flotation device that solves this problem, using only 1-2kg of sample per test. It enables the rapid and efficient testing of the technology for ore amenability, geometallurgical evaluation as well as potentially circuit modelling and design. This in turn can provide significantly improved data for decision-making, reducing the risk of implementing fluidised bed flotation technology in industrial applications.

Bio: Lizette Verster is a minerals processing engineer with 15 years’ of industrial experience, focusing on process monitoring, quality control and driving continuous optimisation at the operations where she worked. She joined the JKMRC almost 5 years ago, with the desire to use her industrial experience in applied research, focusing on novel flotation equipment such as the Jameson cell and the HydroFloat®. Lizette was the technical lead in the development of the JKHFmini.