15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
EXPERT CONTROL OF COLUMN FLOTATION WITH FROTH OVERLOADING PREVENTION
Oscar Daniel Chuk* and Vicente Mut**
* Instituto de Investigaciones Mineras
** Instituto de Automática. Facultad de Ingeniería-Universidad Nacional de San Juan- Argentina.

This paper aims at describing an expert control design for grade and recovery optimization in a column flotation plant, also avoiding the froth overloading phenomenon by monitoring concentrate froth solid-to-liquids ratio. Such expert system can be defined by means of simple fuzzy inference systems which basically modify froth depth and gas holdup.
Keywords: column flotation, expert systems, fuzzy logic
Session slot T-Tu-A12: Modern Approaches to Control of Mineral Processing/Area code 7b : Mining, Mineral and Metal Processing