Spirals and Fluidised Beds

[galvin]

Although there is some potential competition between the use of spirals and fluidised bed gravity concentrators (eg Teetered Beds), I wonder whether there has been much success in combining the two in a circuit to achieve synergy.

[P]

Looking at the articles on Outokumpu Technology's website, one can see fairly quickly that they market their Floatex unit (Teetered bed) as a spiral "enhancer" rather than a pure substitute. I personally dont feel that these should nescassarily be in competition. Each technology has got its "place" and they work great toghether.

I also think that any company trying to sell their unit (Teetered bed) on the basis of totally substituting spirals will find it very difficult, and that they need to be carefull as to how they market it. If a client test one spiral against a teetered bed, they will probably find that the teetered bed work just as good as the spiral, however it is only after you treat the overflow and underflow over a spiral that you see the true benefit of the teetered beds. So if the test is marketed and set-up wrong you will probably stuggle to justify a teetered bed, especially in an existing plant.

Regarding you question if there has been much success in combining them...... meaning a built plant.... I dont know. Maybe one of the suppliers can shed some light.

Note: I dont work for Outukumpu so I'm not trying to sell it....

[ajohnston]

Do you have any separation efficiency curves for the two to compare? We're building a Limn model for a spiral plant at the moment and I'd like to compare how replacing some of the spirals a teetered bed would effect the performance. We have plant data on grade and recovery by screen fraction for each equipment, and so we'd need some sort of separation efficiency by particle size information.
Please get in contact if you have this. Thanks

[Galvinmoderator]

For coal preparation, try the following reference:

"Improved Operational Databases for Fine Coal", B. Atkinson, A. Swanson (QCC Resources), 10th Aust Coal Prep Conf., Pokolbin, 17-21 October 2004, Published by Australian Coal Preparation Society Limited, www.acps.com.au, Editor Wesley Membrey, pp172-184

This paper covers Spirals, Fluidized Beds, Flotation

[p]

Or just contact Outokumpu directly. They should be able to help.

[barrywills]

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