DEVELOPMENT OF A SKID WITH GENERATION OF NANOBUBBLES FOR THE FLOTATION PROCESS, ASSOCIATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLLECTORS BASED ON MODIFIED STARCH
Flotation, Nanobubbles, Ore, Tailings, NBI
The reduction of high iron content reserves, together with the need for economic use of all mineral resources extracted in the mine, makes the separation of fine and ultrafine ore a reason for important research resources. Flotation is the unit operation most used in the separation of particles of granulometry between 10 μm and 300 μm, but the comminution present in the initial stages of processing produces smaller particles, commonly discarded in the form of wet or dry tailings. In this context, the use of micro and nanobubbles in reverse cationic flotation, with gelatinized starch as a depressant, has been tested in order to increase the recovery of this particulate by different mechanisms. This work seeks to evaluate the influence of the use of micro and nanobubbles in the reverse cationic flotation process, of iron ore processing waste, together with the use of starch modified by thermal and alkaline association with Ammonium Hydroxide. For the generation of bubbles, a pumping system was built, using a venturi tube for suction of air in the pump suction and subsequent pressurization of the system at 4 bar in a saturation vessel. Design of experiments (DOE) was applied for modeling and process optimization through the Normal Boundary Intersection (NBI) algorithm, obtaining parameters of maximum recovery of iron ore fines.