Discussion of Papers Published Prior to 1957 - Scale-Up Relationships in Spodumene Flotation (1958) (211, p. 1182)

John Dasher (Central Research Laboratory, Crucible Steel Co. of America, Pittsburgh. Pa.)— Getting spodumene to float quickly and cleanly can be a problem. The author has presented an excellent account of a valid and useful approach to the scale-up of such problem floats. This indicated advantages for doubling retention time, i.e., buying another set of flotation cells. The author states that 21 pct of the spodumene floated in 2 min in the laboratory cell, that the grade of the rougher was about 75 pct spodumene, and that the final tailing contained 4 to 12 pct spodumene in different sizes with the present cells and 1 to 9 pct spodumene with twice as many cells. About 20 years ago, this writer obtained in the laboratory the flotation of over 90 pct of this spodumene in a King's Mountain sample in 1 min at a grade of 90 pct spodumene in the rougher and a final tailing that contained only 1 pct spodumene. The methods of Norman, Ralston," and Gieseke' were used, which teach that spodumene floats quickly and cleanly if its surfaces have been properly conditioned chemically and/or mechanically prior to flotation. Although feed preparation is not discussed, the results reported indicate that it is inadequate. This writer suggests that improvements in this area might be more effective than doubling the number of cells. W. E. Horst (author's reply)—Dasher's comments are appreciated by the author and require some clarification. He suggests that improved spodumene flotation performance may be obtained by feed preparation techniques rather than increased retention time in flotation. Certainly flotation performance is dependent on feed preparation and this is an important feature in the flotation process. It is true that certain types of spodumene ores, particularly weathered ores, require more complicated feed preparation processing than clean ores to achieve the desired flotation results. It was not implied that current feed preparation techniques are the same as experienced during the scale-up investigations. Although discussion of feed preparation was omitted from the article on scale-up relationships, the important feature was that pre-treatment processing was the same for each level of operation investigated— laboratory, pilot plant, and plant scale. Under these similar conditions large differences existed in recovery for comparable time intervals in each scale of operation. It is highly probable that feed preparation techniques could be modified and thereby increase the flotation rate for each scale or all scales of operation discussed. However, modifications would have to be justified on an economic basis.