Understanding the agglomeration behavior of nickel laterite and gold ores using statistical design of experiments

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Publication Type pre-print
School or College College of Mines & Earth Sciences
Department Metallurgical Engineering
Creator Miller, Jan D.
Other Author Dhawan, N.; Safarzadeh, M. S.; Moats, M. S.; Free, M. L.
Title Understanding the agglomeration behavior of nickel laterite and gold ores using statistical design of experiments
Date 2014-01-01
Description The drum agglomeration of nickel laterite and gold ores has been optimized through the design of experiments (DOE) using a Taguchi L16 (45) orthogonal array to determine the optimum conditions for maximizing average agglomerate size and minimizing the amount of fines. The effects of controllable operating factors including moisture content (nickel laterite ore: 34-37%; gold ore: 7-10%), retention time (2-3.5 min), drum speed (15-45% critical speed), drum load (nickel laterite ore: 8-32 %; gold ore: 6-22%) and acid concentration (150-600 g/L) on the performance of the agglomeration process were studied. For nickel laterite ore, maximum average agglomerate size and minimum percent fines (-1 mm) occurred under the following conditions: drum load (23.7%), moisture (36.5%), time (3 min), drum speed (30% critical speed) and acid concentration (150 g/L). Under the studied nickel laterite ore conditions, the most effective parameters for maximizing average agglomerate size and minimizing the amount of fines were found to be drum load and acid concentration, respectively. Drum speed had a statistically significant effect on minimizing the amount of fines. Maximum average agglomerate size and minimum percent fines (-1 mm) for gold ore occurred under the following conditions: drum load (19.3%), moisture (8.5%), time (2 min 15 s) and drum speed (40% critical). The most significant factors for maximizing average agglomerate size and minimizing the amount of fines for gold ore were found to be drum load, time and moisture.
Type Text
Publisher Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration
Volume 31
Issue 1
First Page 21
Last Page 33
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Dhawan, N., Safarzadeh, M. S., Miller, J. D., Moats, M. S., & Free, M. L. (2014). Understanding the agglomeration behavior of nickel laterite and gold ores using statistical design of experiments. Minerals and Metallurgical Processing, 31(1), 21-33.
Rights Management (c) Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 724,787 bytes
Identifier uspace,18553
ARK ark:/87278/s6477m08
Setname ir_uspace
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Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6477m08