Reagent dosages control based on bubble size characteristics for flotation process

The reagent dosages can directly affect the concentrate grade and recovery in the mineral flotation process. For many years, the dosage has mainly been controlled by human observation of froth image features, especially the bubble size. However, the reagent dosage control based on human experience can easily cause fluctuation of the performance index, which may result in wasted ore resources and chemical reagents. In this paper, a control method of reagent dosages based on bubble size characteristics is proposed. By combining the distribution features of the bubble size, the estimation method of the probability density function of the bubble size was introduced, as was the method of determining the optimal width of the kernel function based on the maximum entropy. The error of the output bubble size PDF and the optimal bubble size PDF was used as the performance indicator to transform the control of the reagent dosages into optimization of seeking the minimum performance indicator. In the process of selecting the best individual in every generation of the DE algorithm, the constraint of the reagent cost is taken into consideration. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed method.