National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

The U.S. Bureau of Mines has developed a computer model to describe a flotation process. Coal data from conventional flotation has been converted to a simple, two-parameter kinetic model developed by Reuter and van Deventer (1,2)3. Each set of coal data was represented by two constants, ? and ?, and an average flotation rate. The success of the model was demonstrated when the calculated and experimental recoveries showed good correlation. The two-parameter model allows complex data to be defined much more efficiently than traditional knowledge-based models.