Electrical capacitance volume tomography validation of column flotation process with gas injection variation

Abstract

Electrical capacitance volume tomography (ECVT) is proposed as a novel real-time monitoring system for column flotation process. This study aims to validate the results between static and dynamic simulations using ECVT and ECVT-Computational Fluids Dynamics (ECVT-CFD) and real-time column flotation monitoring experiment using ECVT system. Bubble fractions from both the simulations and the experiments with the variation of gas velocity (0.02, 0.03 and 0.04 m/s) were compared and measured. The results of the study showed that ECVT experiments successfully simulated the images of bubbles inside the real-time column flotation. Both simulations and experiments showed that the bubble fraction increased with the increasing of gas velocity. Furthermore, the comparison between the simulated bubble fraction and the experimental results gave a validation accuracy range of 86%-98%. It was also indicated that at higher gas velocity (0.04 m/s) the accuracy of the simulations is better than that of lower gas velocity (0.02 and 0.03 m/s).