15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
LEVEL CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR FLOTATION CELLS
P. Kämpjärvi, S-L. Jämsä-Jounela
Helsinki University of Technology
Laboratory of Process Control and Automation
Kemistintie 1,02150 Espoo, FINLAND
E-mail: Sirkka-l@hut.fi

: Flotation is a difficult process to run efficiently. One way to make flotation performance better is to improve cell level control. However, controlling pulp levels in flotation cells is a complex control task because of strong interactions between the levels in flotation cells. Therefore advanced controllers are needed to give good level control. This paper deals with a model of six flotation cells in series. Simulations are performed to compare different control strategies. Four control strategies are considered: one SISO controller and three different MIMO controllers. It is shown that level control performances of the MIMO controllers are significantly better than that of the classical SISO controller.
Keywords: Decoupling, Multivariable control, Feedforward control, MIMO, SISO, Level control
Session slot T-Tu-A12: Modern Approaches to Control of Mineral Processing/Area code 7b : Mining, Mineral and Metal Processing