Flotation

SGS has earned the reputation as the most experienced and trusted organization involved in flotation circuit flowsheet design and troubleshooting. Our core philosophy is to understand the variability of the ore parameters that affect flotation performance and then design, optimize or forecast your circuit performance based on these parameters.

With standardized testing, cutting-edge mineralogy, an excellent suite of bench and pilot scale equipment and experienced technical experts, we provides mineral processing laboratory and pilot test programs designed to achieve your objectives quickly and efficiently. Strong ties to a broad range of equipment and flotation reagent suppliers ensure we have the most effective, practical, and innovative methods for mineral separation.

Flotation is an incredibly robust and versatile process that is well accepted around the world. It works equally well on mixed sulfide, oxide, silicate and other ores. It relies on generating a population of bubbles of suitable size that can carry the hydrophobic target mineral (usually but not exclusively sulfide minerals) up to be recovered.

We offer scientifically proven technology to measure flotation cell hydrodynamic variables using high-end optical equipment and software. By visualizing and understanding the “hidden” factors of flotation cell hydrodynamics, SGS has the expertise to provide you with reliable data and solutions for more efficient flotation.

Beyond flowsheet development and piloting of traditional flotation circuits, we offer you a comprehensive combination of flotation circuit expertise, technologies and equipment, including:

• Oxide and reverse flotation
• Reagent scheme development
• MFT test
• Locked cycle test
• Process mineralogy
• Column and contact cell flotation
• Flotation equipment

We execute our testwork and protocols in a step-wise fashion that keeps your costs low, gives project milestones for financing while still permitting each phase of work to build on the previous. Bench scale scoping work flows smoothly into variability testing and geometallurgy and on into pilot testing at SGS.

Our typical project flow includes:

• Flowsheet development is done on carefully selected drill core composite samples that represent the major ore types in a deposit
• Our cutting-edge mineralogy technologies, such as QEMSCAN, ensures that our project metallurgists understand the mineral deportment and liberation and so can optimize the circuit early in the design stage
• Locked-cycle tests are done to prove the basic flotation circuit flowsheet
• Piloting to prove the flowsheet and review the impact of recycle streams, bleed stream and impurity build-ups
• Advanced kinetic-based computer simulations use data generated from a series of small-scale tests to fine-tune the flowsheet. These provide you with circuit options that ensure you can evaluate the trade-offs between upfront capital expenditure, operating costs and flexibility (including energy and reagent costs) with grade and recovery performance

We have all of the expertise and equipment necessary to complete the flotation flowsheet with thickening, filtering or leaching test work. We have done bench and pilot plant testing on thousands of flotation projects. Our integrated mineralogy services, chemical laboratories, environmental testing and project waste disposal capabilities make us your preferred partner for trusted flowsheet development.