| Issue |
MATEC Web Conf.
Volume 416, 2025
XXIst International Coal Preparation Congress: “Advancing Sustainable Coal Preparation” (ICPC XXI 2025)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 06003 | |
| Number of page(s) | 15 | |
| Section | Dewatering and Tailings | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/202541606003 | |
| Published online | 10 November 2025 | |
Froth flotation and subsequent dewatering circuit optimization
1 Marshall Miller & Associates, Inc., 582 Industrial Park Road, Bluefield, VA, USA
2 Marshall Miller & Associates, Inc., 1700 Kraft Drive, Suite 2050, Blacksburg, VA, USA
3 Core Natural Resources, 21550 Barbour County Highway, Philippi, WV, USA
* Corresponding author: peter.bethell@mma1.com
The proper selection of dewatering equipment downstream of flotation is vital in maximizing preparation plant yield. As such, mismatched flotation and dewatering equipment can lead to catastrophic reductions in plant profitability. This paper covers optimum flotation and subsequent dewatering circuit configurations for thermal and coking coal worldwide. The benefits of using deslime column flotation together with screen bowl centrifuges for thermal coals will be discussed, with numerous successful applications mentioned. Likewise for coking coals, conventional versus column flotation applications will be reviewed. The benefits of the Australian practices of dewatering "by-zero" froth concentrates using disc or horizontal belt vacuum filters will also be quantified. The advantages of using pressure filtration in the USA and Canada compared to using centrifuges on by-zero froth concentrates will be discussed in detail, with industrial examples. In particular, the frothing problems seen in many plants using centrifuges to dewater conventional by-zero froth, and more particularly column froth concentrates, will be highlighted. The paper will conclude with a section describing successful applications of slimes flotation followed by pressure filtration.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.