Investigating the effect of some operating parameters on phosphate flotation kinetics by neural network

Artificial neural network (ANN) was used to simulate the effect of feed mean size, collector dosage, and impeller speed on flotation kinetic. Simulation were conducted using multi layer feed forward neural network assuming that flotation is following first order kinetic model. Simulation results showed that flotation rate constant (K) exponentially increased with increasing particle size up to a certain limit where it then decreased sharply. On the contrary, flotation rate constant (K) was inversely proportional with collector dosage but gradually increased with increasing impeller rotational speed.