Analyse des circuits mineralurgiques par cascadographie—Caracterisation de l'alimentation et evaluation de la fonction de selection

Cascadography is a generic, laboratory, instrumentational method of separating and characterizing mixes of mineral or particle species based on subtle physical and physiochemical differences. Like gas chromatography, cascadography characterizes a sample by the temporal separation of mineral species. Using a number of identical unit operations in series, the sample feed is injected into the first unit operation at time equals zero, and samples are taken at regular intervals from the last cell product. From the n-th cell, the product becomes the feed to the (n+1)th cell. Other than as a product, no material is removed from any cell—there is no circulating load or feedback. First to appear in the product are the rapidly moving particles followed by the more slowly moving particles. For example, if there exists a number of identical particles, then the particles will appear together in the output of the system. As the number of cells in series increases, so does the resolution between batches of particles with similar properties. If the system being studied is flotation, pure mineral species as well as locked particle assays can be made of the feed and waste streams, and from this information, the flotation cell selection function can be calculated.