Page 13 - TU Dresden - StuFoExpo 2024: Book of Abstracts

3 Ingenieurwissenschaften

Understanding particle collisions in flotation
A path to sustainable mining

Hahs, Filip| filip.hahs@mailbox.tu-dresden.de
Fakultät Maschinenwesen, Technische Universität Dresden
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The transition to new energy resources necessitates an increased reliance on mining activities to
secure essential minerals. This shift is driven by the demand for raw materials required in renew-
able energy technologies such as electric vehicles. Important compounds such as copper, must
be separated, from rock in which they occur naturally.

One of the processes employed for this purpose is flotation, where air is introduced into a mixture
of fine rock particles, water and chemicals closely resembling soap. The valuable material attaches
to the bubbles, is carried upward, and can be collected. Despite its extensive use, flotation is still a
poorly understood process. Understanding this process will lead to more efficient flotation cells,
and will reduce the environmental and societal impact of mining

So far, the collision and attachment processes were mostly studied independently of each other.
The aim of this work is to implement a method to simulate the attachment of collided particles,
their movement on the bubble surface and the subsequent effects on further collisions. In this
research suitable numerical models are devised and tested on simple cases. Using large-scale sim- INGENIEURWISSENSCHAFTEN
ulations the effects of combined collision and attachment processes were quantified. The naturally
occurring bubble saturation is visualized. Experimental results were matched closely.

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