Optimizing flotation bank performance by recovery profiling

This paper uses the first-order fully mixed model to argue that operating a bank of cells with a flat cell-by-cell recovery profile yields maximum separation between two floatable minerals with constant relative floatability for a target bank cumulative recovery. The bank optimization problem thus translates into a local problem of selecting cell manipulated variables, such as air rate, to reach that recovery profile. Some properties of the bank that emerge from the analysis are discussed. Recovery profiling appears to contribute to the success of air profiling recently reported.