Enhanced analysis of spiral separation performance

Abstract

Standard material analysis methods used in the heavy minerals industry to characterise spiral separation behaviour is unable to fully quantify performance differences between the available spiral profiles of today. This study proposes an enhanced method to analyse spiral products to identify key separation performance differences between different spiral profiles for specific feed materials. The enhanced analysis method has two major components. The first involves a material characterisation method that was developed using the analytical capability of QemscanR

to simultaneously quantify particle density and particle size. The second involves a data presentation method that was developed by making improvements to the Holland-Batt equation. The standard material characterisation method was compared to the enhanced method using the separation products of two different spiral profiles with two different feed materials. The benefit of the developed method is clearly demonstrated by the additional separation performance information that it produced. This information enables the user to make more informed decisions when identifying spiral performance deviations in current installations, when selecting the correct spiral profile prior to spiral replacement, and during the spiral plant design process.