A sensitivity analysis of kinetic characterizations in continuous flotation circuits under moderate deviations with respect to perfect mixing

This paper studies the effect of moderate deviations with respect to perfect mixing on the estimated kinetic parameters in industrial flotation banks. Radioactive tracer tests and mass balance surveys were performed to characterize the mixing regimes and Cu kinetic responses. For three models (Single Rate Constant, Rectangular and Gamma), two approaches to incorporate the residence time distributions (RTD) in the kinetic characterizations of rougher banks were compared: (i) RTDs measured from the radioactive tracer tests; and (ii) pure perfect mixing in each flotation machine. The measured RTDs did not present significant bypass in the evaluated banks. In all cases, comparable model fitting was obtained with both RTD approaches, which indicates that the kinetic models add sufficient flexibility to compensate for moderate biases in the mixing regime. The studied kinetic models showed non-significant differences in the estimated maximum recoveries (R???), mean (kmean) and median (k50) rate constants when comparing the process modelling from measured RTDs and pure perfect mixing. However, the Gamma model was more sensitive to the RTD assumption in terms of the shapes of the flotation rate distributions. From the results, kinetic characterizations focused only on model fitting, or on R??? and kmean (or k50) estimations have low sensitivity to the assumption of perfect mixing when the RTDs present moderate deviations with respect to this regime. Special attention must be paid when characterizing floating components as the perfect mixing assumption may bias the shapes of the flotation rate distributions.