Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

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Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

A review of CFD modelling studies on the flotation process T

a b b b c a,⁎
Guichao Wang , Linhan Ge , Subhasish Mitra , Geoffrey M. Evans , J.B. Joshi , Songying Chen
a
Key Laboratory of High-efficiency and Clean Mechanical Manufacture, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Mechanical Engineering Education, Shandong
University, Jinan, Shandong 250061, PR China
b
Discipline of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Newcastle, 2308, Australia
c
Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai 400094, India

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A comprehensive review of the published literature regarding the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling
Froth flotation of the flotation process is presented. The detailed principles, mechanism and operation of the flotation process
Computational fluid dynamics are discussed focusing mainly on the hydrodynamic aspect which is required for the successful operation of the
Bubble-particle interactions flotation cell.
Hydrodynamics
The kinetic modelling of flotation process has been reviewed in detail in three major flotation equipment
namely mechanically agitated flotation cell, flotation column and dissolved air flotation. The advances made in
the modelling and simulations of the equipment have been critically analyzed. Specific emphasis is given on the
bubble-particle interactions and the effect of turbulence on these interactions. An attempt has been made to
correlate the model parameters with the turbulence parameters. A thorough discussion is presented to highlight
strengths and weaknesses of currently used CFD models and the recent developments in the numerical simu-
lation tools for better understanding of the process. Finally, recommendations have been made for the future
progress based on the analysis of the previous work.

1. Introduction
Froth flotation has become an important process for separating
valuable minerals from the host rock in the mining industry since it was
invented at Broken Hill by Guillaume and C.V. Potter in 1903. It uses
bubbles as carriers to attach to hydrophobic particles due to strong
adhesion force and lift them into a froth layer, whilst hydrophilic
particles settle to the bottom of the flotation device and come out in the
tailings. This selective process is achieved based on the difference in
hydrophobicity of particles, where valuable mineral particles are gen-
erally hydrophobic (water repellent) in nature or may be rendered
hydrophobic property by the addition of collector compounds. The
mineral particles reports to froth layer and are collected as a top pro-
duct in the form of concentrate whereas the gangue particles are
drained from the bottom as tailings. In some cases, gangue particles are
hydrophobic, and valuable mineral particles are hydrophilic and come
out into the tailings, which is called reverse flotation. According to
Ruthven (1997), approximately one billion tons of ore are treated an-
nually by this method. Flotation is also used in processes like waste-
water treatment, oil sands processing, plastic recycling, deinking of the
paper, solvent-extraction/electrowinning (Bloom and Heindel, 1997a,b;
Kasongo et al., 2000; Rubio et al., 2002).
For the efficient mineral recovery using flotation devices, the design
and operating parameters must be maintained such that the hydro-
dynamics in the flotation cell is beneficial to particle collection. There
are different types of flotation equipment to achieve this goal, and
generally they are categorized into two groups, i.e. mechanically agi-
tated machines and flotation columns. Mechanical flotation cells are the
conventional flotation machines employing rotating impellers to sus-
pending and mixing particles. Air bubbles are generated either from a
self-inducing impeller in a self-aerated cell or from an air sparger placed
underneath the impeller using external air blower to supply air under
pressure in a forced-air cell. Patwardhan and Joshi (1999) have pre-
sented a comprehensive review of self-inducing mechanically agitated
contactors. The feed slurry is fed into the tank. The gas gets sucked into
the flotation cell due to the pressure difference created by the impeller
rotation. Hydrodynamics of the mechanically agitated flotation ma-
chines has been studied extensively. It is characterized by the presence
of large spatial variations in the distribution of liquid velocity and en-
ergy dissipation rates in the flotation cell. Highly turbulent liquid flow
is present in the stirrer region and turbulence intensity in the region far
away from the impeller is very low. Bubbles entrained into the stirrer
region are broken into smaller bubbles due to high shear rate. High
turbulence brings particles and bubbles together in enhancing bubble-

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: chensy66@sdu.edu.cn (S. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2018.08.019
Received 31 May 2017; Received in revised form 24 July 2018; Accepted 8 August 2018
Available online 20 August 2018
0892-6875/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
G. Wang et al.
particle collision and therefore increases the probability of bubble-
particle attachment. Bubble-particle aggregates migrate from the tur-
bulent region to the quiescent region and report to the froth layer.
However, particle recovery rate does not increase monotonically with
the rotational speed of a stirrer as high turbulence dislodges the at-
tached particles from bubbles.
The flotation column was developed in the early 1960s. The main
advantages of the column flotation cells over conventional mechanical
ones are simplicity in design, absence of any moving part, ability to
handle fines as well as coarse particles, a low capital and operational
cost, the less plant space required and adaptability to automatic control.
However, the mixing in the column is of poor quality as it is dependent
on the rising of bubble swarms and settling of particles. The height of
the column is important in bubble-particle contacting (Finch, 1995).
New designs of flotation machines have been implemented to treat two
basic functions of flotation, i.e. attach particles to bubbles and separate
bubble-particle aggregates from pulp, individually to achieve an overall
improvement in machine performance (Jameson, 1988). This is well
represented in the configuration of Jameson cell, which is consisted of
two parts, a downcomer and a cell. Slurry is introduced into the
downcomer forming a jet and air is entrained into the jet forming a
swarm of bubbles due to high shear rate, and particles contact and
attach to bubbles in the downcomer forming bubble-particle aggregates
(Jameson, 1998). The contents in the downcomer discharge into the
cell and bubble-particle aggregates rise in the pulp and form a stable
froth layer.
It is widely known that the rate of capture of particles in the froth
flotation process is a function of particle size. Typically, flotation re-
covery depends on particle size. Initially, flotation recovery increases
with particle size monotonically and reaches a plateau. Afterwards,
flotation recovery plummets with an increase in particle size (Crawford
and Ralston, 1988; De F. Gontijo et al., 2007; Dobby and Finch, 1987;
Gaudin et al., 1931; Trahar, 1981). Mineral particles that are in the size
range 20–150 µm in diameter float relatively quickly, while recovery
decreases with particles that are smaller and larger. It has been hy-
pothesised that the reason for the decrease observed with coarse par-
ticles is the relative magnitudes of the forces of attachment and de-
tachment. Particles are held on the surfaces of bubbles by a capillary
force exerted at the three-phase contact line, which is linearly related to
the length of the line and hence to the diameter of the particle. De-
tachment takes place by a body force acting on a particle, whether by
gravity or through a centrifugal or inertial force arising from a change
in the direction of the particles, that is related to the mass of particle
and hence to the cube of its diameter. As the diameter increases, the
magnitude of the detaching force increases much more rapidly relative
to the force of attraction, and when the former exceeds the latter, the
particle will detach. Koh et al. (2009) and Verrelli et al. (2014) have
investigated the effect of particle shape on the flotation in laboratory
experiments. The particles were treated with trimethylchlorosilane to
achieve varying degrees of hydrophobicity. The results show that
ground ballotini has higher flotation rate than spherical ones, showing
faster film thinning and rupture in the case of rough surfaces.
Flotation equipment have been designed in a variety of different
configurations with slightly different (not identical) functions, serving
as scavengers, roughers, or cleaners. Though flotation is a well-estab-
lished method in particle processing, there is a lack of in-depth
knowledge of the principles due to the presence of complex three-phase
flow and associated phenomena such as hydrodynamics, the motion of
bubbles and solids, bubble-particle interactions and surface chemistry
involved (Yianatos, 2007). This hinders progress in optimization of
existing flotation machines and development of new flotation ma-
chines. Given the complex interactions occurring in the flotation pro-
cess, many researchers have investigated the effect of turbulence on the
flotation process (Bloom and Heindel, 2002; Bloom and Heindel, 2003;
Changunda et al., 2008; Fallenius, 1987; Deglon et al., 2000; De F.
Gontijo et al., 2007; Goel and Jameson, 2012; Massey et al., 2012;
154
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
Schubert, 1999; Schubert and Bischofberger, 1978; Koh and Smith,
2011; Koh et al., 2000; Koh and Schwarz, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008a,
2008b; Shahbazi et al., 2009; Nguyen Van, 1994; Nguyen and Evans,
2004; Nguyen Van and Kmeť, 1992; Wang et al., 2016a,b), and a good
review has been authored by Nguyen et al. (2016) on the effect of
turbulence on bubble-particle interactions in flotation. Developments in
sophisticated experimental tools such as laser Doppler velocimetry and
particle image velocimetry (PIV) have been used by Newell and Grano
(2007a), Brady et al. (2006) and Seaman et al. (2004) to gain a more
detailed understanding of the hydrodynamics. A most recent work by
Darabi et al. (2017) has applied PIV to study turbulence characteristics
in an aerated flotation cell. It was found the local turbulence hydro-
dynamics was changed due to the presence of air bubbles. Due to the
complex interactions between phases in a flotation process, insights
gained from experimental methods are limited, and phase interactions
in a turbulent field remain unsolved.
The applications of computationally assisted modelling to the mi-
neral processing industry started from the early 90s (Napier-Munn and
Lynch, 1992; Schwarz, 1991). Computer simulation and modelling
gradually proved to be a powerful tool in mineral processing research
because of the rapid development of computer technology and new
simulation techniques (Schwarz, 2012). The time dependent turbulent
flow field can be resolved by CFD methods, which can simulate the
flows of liquids, gases and particles in the equipment in order to provide
the details needed to improve process performance. The advantage of
this approach is the potential to model any tank design at any scale,
providing a wealth of details, such as internal velocities, shear rates,
turbulence parameters, distributions of phases, bubble sizes, and re-
sidence time distribution (Evans et al., 2008). The effect of turbulence
on the flotation process then can be taken into account when scaling up
flotation cells from laboratory scale to industrial scale. In view of the
above, computational modelling is indispensable to the design and
optimization of flotation cells, in addition to theoretical and experi-
mental investigations. Significant studies are reported on computa-
tional modelling of flotation processes. This literature review is in-
tended to summarize previous studies with an emphasis on in-depth
analysis of the influence of hydrodynamics on the flotation process.
2. Principles of flotation
Drawing an analogue to chemical reaction which involve collisions
among molecules, the flotation process is often described as a first-order
process relating rate of flotation to particle concentration (Ahmed and
Jameson, 1989; Arbiter and Harris, 1962; Jameson et al., 1977; Jowett
and Safvi, 1960; Kelsall, 1961; Klassen and Mokrousov, 1963;
Sutherland, 1948). Following this definition, the rate of the particle
capture process can be described as
dNp
= −kNp
dt (1)
where the rate constant, k , represents the rate of removal of particles
from the pulp, and Np is the number of free particles in the pulp phase.
It is noted that Eq. (1) only applies to removal of particles in a batch
process and it does not account for inflows and outflows while in
practice all flotation systems are operated in continuous mode. The
kinetic modelling of flotation process is important from both design and
operation perspective. Many attempts have been reported in the lit-
erature on the modelling of the flotation recovery (Bloom and Heindel,
1997a, 2003; Mao and Yoon, 1997; Pyke et al., 2003; Ralston, 1999;
Yoon and Mao, 1996). Integrating Eq. (1), recovery defined as ratio of
remaining particles to the initial number of particles can be expressed
as
R = 1−exp (−kt ) (2)
The critical parameter here is the rate constant k, which in fact does
not remain constant during the course of the process. Rate constant is
G. Wang et al.
typically expressed as a function of physical parameters of the system
(Bushell, 1962; Deglon et al., 1999; Gorain et al., 1995, 1997;
Heiskanen, 2000; Jameson et al., 1977; Jowett and Safvi, 1960; Morris,
1952; Vazirizadeh et al., 2015). It can be written as
3QhPcollection
k=
2db Vc (3)
where Q is the gas volumetric flow rate, h is the depth of flotation cell,
db is the bubble diameter, Vc is the effective volume of the cell, Pcollection
is the probability that a particle can be collected in the pulp phase. Eq.
(3) indicates an inverse relation of rate constant with the bubble size
and reflects that smaller bubble size is beneficial for enhanced recovery.
Rate constant also varies proportionally with the particle collection
efficiency which has direct dependency on the particle size.
The particle collection process, following the relationship given by
Sutherland (1948), can be decomposed into three distinct physical
phenomena: collision between particles and bubbles; attachment of
particles to bubbles and detachment of particles from bubbles. Ac-
counting for these probabilities, particle collection probability has been
written as
Pcollection = Pc Pa (1−Pd ) (4)
where Pc is collision probability, Pa is attachment probability and Pd is
the probability of detachment of a particle from the collecting bubble. It
should be noted that Schulze (1993) has argued that Eq. (4) is a rea-
sonable assumption, and most researchers have subsequently followed
this approach. It is apparent that collision, attachment and detachment
process should be individually modelled properly in order to model the
flotation process kinetics successfully to predict the product recovery
from limited known input variables.
A more complete definition of the kinetics of flotation process for a
semi-batch system considering both particle attachment and detach-
ment phenomenon can be written as (Bloom and Heindel, 1997a,b):
dNp
= −k1 Np + k2 NBa
dt (5)
where the particle attachment rate constant, k1 is given as
k1 = Z1 Pc Pa (1−Pd ) (6)
where Z1 is the collision frequency between particles and bubbles. In
Eq. (5), NB is number of bubbles present in the system, a is an em-
pirically determined exponent and k2 is the bubble-particle aggregate
breakage rate which is given as
k2 = Z2 Pd (7)
where Z2 is the detachment frequency of particles from bubbles. Eqs.
(4)–(7) indicate that detailed understanding of the sub-processes, i.e.
bubble-particle collision, bubble-particle attachment and bubble-par-
ticle detachment, is important for estimation of the flotation rate con-
stant. Further, all the sub-processes are influenced by the physico-
chemical surface properties of particles, the concentration of collector
chemicals in the system and finally hydrodynamic parameters such as
flow field and energy dissipation rate.
In a typical flotation cell, bubbles collide with particles while rising
through the pulp and the collision is largely dominated by bulk hy-
drodynamics. The bubble-particle collision is extensively studied, and
excellent reviews on different collision models are available (Dai et al.,
2000; Hassanzadeh et al., 2018; Meyer and Deglon, 2011; Schulze et al.,
1989). Four major mechanisms of collisions are known, namely grav-
itational collision, interceptional collision, collision generated by in-
ertial impaction and turbulent collision. From Nguyen and Schulze
(2004), the collision efficiency models are defined in the following. It
should be noted that collision models provided by Nguyen and Schulze
(2004) are representatives of different mechanisms and other re-
searchers provide collision models of different forms. For details of
these models, readers can refer to comprehensive literature reviews on
155
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
bubble-particle collisions (Dai et al., 2000; Schulze et al., 1989).
When gravity force dominates over fluid inertia especially for large
f v ρ
and high-density particles, particle Froude number ⎛Fr = ⎜
⎞ be- ⎟
⎝
gρp dp
⎠
comes less than unity. Trajectory of a particle deviates from fluid
streamlines due to its dominant settling velocity which characterizes
the gravitational collision process. In such case, collision efficiency can
be expressed as:
Vs
Ec, g =
Vs + U (8)
where Vs is the particle settling velocity, and U is to the bubble slip
velocity. The theory of interceptional collisions between particles and
bubbles assumes particle’s trajectory follows fluid streamline around
the bubble. A particle can collide with a bubble due to interception
effect due to the compression of streamlines passing around the bubble.
Therefore, the collision efficiency determined solely by the flow field
around the bubble can be written as:
Vs
Ec, i = f (R) (X + Y cos φc, i )sin2 φc, i
Vs + U (9)
where f(R) is a function of the interception number which depends on
the surface mobility of bubbles and function φc, i can be expressed as:
X 2 + 3Y 2 −X ⎞
φc, i = a cos ⎜⎛ ⎟
⎝ 3Y ⎠ (10)
ρp vrel dp2
Particles with sufficient inertia (Stokes number St = 9d μ > 1)
b l
deviate from the curvilinear streamlines around the bubble and tend to
continue rather in the direction of relative velocity between bubble and
particle. Collision efficiency of this inertial impaction is given by:
(St )a−b
Ec, in =
(St )a + c (11)
a, b, c, X and Y are functions of Re and gas volume fraction. Details can
refer to Nguyen and Schulze (2004).
Due to turbulent behaviour of flow field inside a flotation device
which introduces spatial variations in fluid velocity, collision between a
pair of particle and bubble is also caused by the turbulence force. The
corresponding collision efficiency could be written as:
3 ρl λK
Ec, t = 18
15 ρs −ρl Rp + Rb (12)
where λk is the turbulent internal scale. ρl and ρs are liquid and solid
density, respectively. Rp and Rb are particle and bubble radius, re-
spectively.
When a particle collides with a bubble, it first slides over the bubble
surface. The residence time of the particle on the bubble is known as
contact time (tc). The surface forces predominate when the thin film
between the bubble and the particle gets reduced much below a few
hundred nanometres. These surface effects may accelerate, retard or
even prevent the thinning of liquid film. Following the collision process,
a thin intervening liquid film forms at the contact area between the
interacting bubble and particle pair. The film thins out due to the in-
ertia of approaching particle and finally ruptures forming a three-phase
contact line which allows to form a stable bubble-particle aggregate.
The drainage of the film is governed by the balance between the viscous
force and pressure force due to bubble interface deformation. A char-
acteristic time known as induction time (tind) is used to define the entire
time for thinning of the intervening liquid film, for the film to rupture
and formation of a stable three-phase contact. Consequently, it is con-
sidered that if a particle makes contact with a bubble for the time longer
than the induction time results in a successful attachment to bubble.
Both the physical properties of bubbles and particles such as surface
hydrophobicity and chemistry of the flotation medium directly govern
the attachment process. For a given particle size, there exists a critical
G. Wang et al.
contact angle below which particle does not attach to bubble interface.
A generally observed trend is that the attachment efficiency mono-
tonically increases with contact angle in the tested range (Sutherland,
1948). Electrolyte concentration is another governing factor for particle
attachment which has been investigated in various experimental stu-
dies. Generally, it has been found that attachment efficiency increases
with increasing electrolyte concentration (Collins and Jameson, 1977;
Hewitt et al., 1995). The reason behind this phenomenon is the de-
creasing intervening film thickness with increasing electrolyte con-
centration (Read and Kitchener, 1969; Blake and Kitchener, 1972;
Somasundaran et al., 2000). Hewitt et al. (1993), measured the thin
film drainage behaviour and reported that the rate of film drainage
increases with increasing electrolyte concentration.
Once the particles get attached to bubble interface, not all of them
remain so before the bubble goes into the froth phase. Particle de-
tachment occurs due to interactions with the turbulent flow structures
when the inertial force of the rotating flow structures overcomes the
capillary force that holds the particles at bubble interface. Coalescence
among neighbouring bubbles is another pathway for particle detach-
ment wherein the inertial force of the resulting capillary waves on
bubble interface dominate over the attaching capillary force. It is often
hypothesized that bubble-particle aggregates are entrained into the
centre of eddies, and centrifugal force dislodges particles from bubbles.
Wang et al. (2016a) reported the rotational motion of attached particles
on the interface of an entrapped bubble inside a vortex. The centrifugal
acceleration was estimated to be as high as twenty times the gravita-
tional acceleration and led to particle detachment. Two approaches
namely force and energy balance have been reported in literature to
explain particle detachment phenomenon (Wang et al., 2016c). From
the perspective of force balance, Schulze (1993) described the prob-
ability of particle detachment as follows:
1
Pd = exp ⎛1− ∗ ⎞
⎝ Bo ⎠ (13)
where BO* is modified Bond number (Schulze, 1993) obtained as the
ratio detachment to attachment force. Incorporating the expressions for
detachment forces (pressure force, gravity) and the attachment force
(capillary force), the detachment probability can be given as:
⎛
Pd = exp ⎜1−
()
6σ sin2 2
θ
⎞
⎟
⎜ dP2 (g (ρp −ρb ) + ρP bm) + 6 dp σ sin2 ()
θ ⎟
⎝ db 2 ⎠ (14)
Due to the perceivable difficulty in carrying out controlled experi-
ments where the interactions between bubbles and particles in a tur-
bulent field could be observed, classical bubble-particle interaction
theory remains hypothetical. The complex behaviours of the turbulent
vortices, and their interactions with bubbles and particles make it dif-
ficult to practically measure the hydrodynamic forces. Gaining this
information of hydrodynamics and interactions between particles and
bubbles is of fundamental research interest and could be utilised for
better design of the existing flotation cells which are conventionally
designed based on empirical correlations.
With access to more computational power, CFD (computational
fluid dynamics) has emerged as a preferred tool for modelling of the
flotation cells which can predict the complex flow dynamics in multi-
phase systems. This approach was first introduced and pioneered by
Koh et al. (2000) and Koh and Schwarz (2003) to provide estimates of
the gas hold-up, net particle attachment rates, bubble loading, flow
patterns and turbulent dissipation rates at various instants in the flo-
tation cell. CFD modelling provides a realistic approach to simulate
flotation process without requiring any additional assumptions on the
turbulent energy dissipation rate which is often related to the bubble-
particle collision and detachment efficiency. It is possible to obtain
local flow patterns, particle-particle and bubble-particle interactions
and the effect of turbulence intensity on the local rates of attachment
156
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
and detachment. The insights into the hydrodynamics behaviour and
information on local interactions are expected to contribute to the de-
velopment of better flotation equipment to improve flotation process
performance.
Although significant studies are reported on the CFD modelling of
the flotation process, to the best of authors’ knowledge there is no
comprehensive review reported in this area. This literature review is
intended to summarise previous CFD modelling studies of the flotation
process with emphasis on in-depth analysis of the hydrodynamics in the
flotation cells and incorporation of the various flotation models. This
review primarily focuses on three major types of different flotation
cells, i.e. mechanically agitated cells, flotation columns and dissolved
air flotation.
3. Bubble-particle collision, attachment, detachment and
flotation rates modelling
Many CFD modelling studies are reported to simulate the flow be-
haviour of the flotation cells using multiphase Eulerian-Eulerian (Deng
et al., 1996; Koh et al., 2000; Koh and Schwarz, 2003, 2006, 2007,
2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011; Kostoglou et al., 2007; Evans et al., 2008;
Mirgaux et al., 2009; Koh and Smith, 2011; Ghaffari and Karimi, 2012;
Sahbaz et al., 2012; Salem-Said et al., 2013, Karimi et al., 2014a,b;
Fayed and Ragab, 2015; Lakghomi et al., 2015; Basavarajappa and
Miskovic, 2016; Cai et al., 2016, 2017; Sarhan et al., 2016;
Basavarajappa et al., 2017; Darabi et al., 2017; Farzanegan, et al., 2017;
Sarhan et al., 2017a,b) and Eulearian-Lagrangian (Xia et al., 2006,
Lichter et al., 2007, Liu and Schwarz, 2009a,b; Bondelind et al., 2010a,
2010b) approach. Mostly, the finite volume approach has been utilised
in the reported studies wherein local values of the flow properties are
calculated by solving the governing continuity and momentum equa-
tion for each phase.
Table 1 lists the governing equations of three different multiphase
CFD approaches namely Eulerian-Eulerian (E-E), mixture phase and
Eulerian-Lagrangian (E-L) often utilised for modelling flotation process.
The E-E approach considers both continuous (liquid medium) and dis-
persed phase (bubble and particle) as interpenetrating incompressible
continuum and motion of each phase is modelled separately. Each
phase is characterised by volume fraction parameter which appears in
the corresponding continuity and momentum equations. Co-existence
of each phase is accounted through various phase interaction para-
meters. Success of the CFD modelling depends critically on the appro-
priate use of these constitutive relationships which define the inter-
phase momentum exchange terms such as drag, lift, virtual mass,
surface tension force, and turbulence dispersion force. Model prediction
depends on the robustness of the actual physics represented by the
constitutive relationships which however are often difficult to obtain in
complex multiphase flow and therefore some inclusions of empiricism
cannot be avoided.
The E-E approach undoubtedly becomes computationally expensive
as the number of equations increases with the number of phases present
in the system. The mixture model on the other hand simplifies E-E
approach considering a single momentum equation for all the phases
assuming they are components of a mixture. Relative or slip velocity
between each pair of phases however is considered to account for the
phase interactions. The third approach is Eulerian-Lagrangian wherein
the continuous fluid medium is modelled in Eulerian manner while the
dispersed phase is tracked in time following Newton’s second law of
motion. Interactions among the phases can be modelled using different
degree of couplings - one-way (phase interactions from continuous
phase on the dispersed phase), two-way coupling (continuous phase
interactions with dispersed phase, dispersed phase interactions on
continuous phase) and four-way coupling (continuous phase interac-
tions with dispersed phase, dispersed phase interactions on continuous
phase, interactions in the dispersed phase itself).
Specific to the flotation process, the expectation from the CFD
G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

Table 1
Constitutive equations used in the CFD modelling.
Model Equations Comments

Single phase
Continuity ∂ρ
+ ∇·ρu = 0
∂t
Momentum ∂ρu
+ ∇·ρ uu = −∇p + ∇·(μL, i + μT , i )(∇ui + (∇ui )T ) + ρ g
∂t

Euler-Euler
Continuity ∂αi ρi
∂t
+ ∇·αi ρi Ui = Si Or • Bubble size is predefine and uniform.
The liquid can be a mixture of solid and liquid (pulp) in which the
∂αi ρi
+ ∇·(αi ρi Ui−ρi Di ∇αi) = Si transport of solids is resolved by other models (e.g. algebraic slip
∂t
model (ASM)).
• The Fi term mainly represents the drag and can also include the added
mass force, lift force, history force or turbulent dispersion force.
• fi term includes the buoyancy force, gravity force or centrifugal and
Coriolis forces in a rotating frame of reference.
Momentum ∂αi ρi ui
+ ∇·[(αi ρi ui ui)] = ∇·[αi (μL, i + μT , i )(∇ui + (∇ui )T )]+
∂t
αi (fi−∇pi ) + Fi + Si ui
Bubble number density
equation
∂αg ρg ϕi
∂t
+ ∇·αg ρg vg ϕi = ∇·αg ρg Dgi ∇ϕi + ρg (BBi−DBi + BCi−DCi ) • Distribution of bubble sizes can be realised by using population
balance method.
Transport equation for
concentration of particles
∂αi ni ϕi
∂t
+ ∇·αi ni ui ϕi = −ϕa + ϕd • The source terms specify attachment and detachment rate models are
used to account for the flotation kinetics.

Mixture
Continuity ∂ρm
+ ∇·ρm um = 0

• Drift velocityu
∂t
Momentum ∂ρm um dr , i = ui−um is used to close the momentum equation.
+ ∇·ρm um um = −∇p + ∇·[μm (um + umT )]+
∂t
n
ρm g + Fm + ∇·⎛⎜ ∑ αi ρi vdr , i vdr , i⎞⎟
⎝i = 1 ⎠
Euler-Lagrangian
Continuity ∂ρ
∂t
+ ∇·ρu = 0 • One way coupling.
Momentum ∂ρu
+ ∇·ρ uu = −∇p + ∇·(μL, i + μT , i )(∇ui + (∇ui )T ) + ρ g

• Two-way
∂t
Continuity ∂αl ρ
+ ∇·αl ρu = 0 coupling
∂t Either particles or bubbles are considered as dispersed phase.
Momentum ∂αl ρu
+ ∇·αl ρ uu = −αl ∇p + αl ∇·(μL, i + μT , i )(∇ui + (∇ui )T ) + αl ρ g

• Saffman
∂t
Particle or bubble motion mi i
du
= Fd + Fp + FG + Fother F may include added mass force, lift force, Mangus force, and
other
dt force, etc.

Nomenclature u: velocity vector

ρ: density
t: time
D: turbulent diffusivity
p: pressure
g: gravity vector
α: phase volume fraction
μ:dynamic viscosity
F: inter-phase force
f: body force
B: birth rate of bubbles
D: death rate of bubbles
n: number density
ϕa: source term of attachment rate
ϕd: source term of detachment rate

Subscript i: represents for each phase

m: mixture
g: gas
l: liquid
L: laminar
T: turbulent
B: breakage
C: coalescence
d: drag
p: pressure gradient
G: gravity

modelling is to connect the flotation kinetics (Koh and Schwarz, 2006)
with the system hydrodynamics specifically local turbulent energy
dissipation rate (ε). It should be noted that in literature, all the sub-
processes of flotation have been correlated with the global turbulent
quantities such as fluctuating particle velocity, fluctuating bubble ve-
locity, turbulent viscosity and turbulent energy dissipation rate. For
flotation kinetics model, various parameters are required, such as par-
ticle diameter, bubble diameter and energy dissipation rate, to account
for the interactions between particles and bubbles. In the early CFD
simulations (Deng et al., 1996; Koh et al., 2000), simplifying assump-
tions were made regarding the diameters of particles and bubbles which
included use of single size class. Also, the simplifications such as using

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G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

mean energy dissipation rate, do not reflect the real situation in flota- in clean water and immobile when the surface is fully covered by sur-
tion cells and inevitably affect the accuracy of recovery performance factants. Liquid flow around the bubble for the above two cases were
predicted by the CFD-based flotation kinetics model. With advancement considered as potential flow and Stokes flow respectively, and therefore
in CFD modelling, more sophisticated methods have been introduced stream function around the bubble can be calculated. For partially
such as population balance model which include breakage and coales- contaminated bubbles, the collision efficiency was found to decrease
cence of bubbles of predefined size classes. with the level of contamination (Sarrot et al., 2005).
The real environment in which bubble-particle collision occurs as
predicted by these CFD models differs from the assumptions used in the
3.1. Bubble-particle collision modelling
conventional predictive formulas for bubble-particle collision effi-
ciency. In the conventional predictive formulas, bubbles were assumed
Bubble-particle collision phenomenon is the key to the success of
to rise in a quiescent liquid. The work of Liu and Schwarz (2009a,b) is
flotation process which is facilitated by the system turbulence specifi-
the first and only study in the literature where CFD simulation of
cally local hydrodynamics in the vicinity of a probable bubble-particle
bubble-particle collisions in a turbulent flow was researched. An in-
collision pair. The classical theory of flotation based on Stokes flow
tegrated CFD-based scheme for the prediction of bubble-particle colli-
considers collision to occur only when the particle follows the trajectory
sion efficiency in a turbulent flow was developed from a multiscale
of nearest streamline past the bubble interface. This simplistic approach
modelling perspective. A comparison of CFD simulation with experi-
for obvious reason does not consider the effect of complete fluid flow
mental data was shown in Fig. 2 and simulations considering mobile
field and associated turbulence which necessitates requirement of the
surface predicted the closest results compared to experimental data.
CFD modelling framework. Nguyen Van and Kmeť (1992), studied the
The proposed model can account for the change in flotation cell geo-
collision behaviour of fine mineral particles with a bubble in a counter
metry and structure, inlet and exit configurations, impeller structure
current flow system. Their work was restricted to the flow condition
and tip speed, air nozzle structure and air flow rate at the macroscale;
that is not highly turbulent keeping the bubble in a stationary state. It
and turbulence, collision mechanisms (interceptional, gravitational or
was noted that the collision process was affected by the diameters of
inertial effects) at the microscale. Shear stress transport turbulence
particle and bubble, the slip velocity of bubble, and the density of the
model was employed to account for the effect of turbulence on collision
particles. Collision efficiency was shown to increase with particle size,
efficiency. The turbulence was assumed as 3D isotropic decayed sta-
as is shown in Fig. 1.
tionary turbulence involving velocity, turbulent kinetic energy and
Koh et al. (2000, 2003) developed a CFD-based turbulent collision
energy dissipation rate inputs specified based on the CFD model of a
model to estimate the rate of bubble-particle contacts utilising the en-
flotation cell. The energy dissipation rate was calculated using a
ergy dissipation rate and the number concentrations of bubbles and
Gaussian turbulence field randomly generated in a flotation cell. The
particles in a flotation cell and a stirred tank. Three different zones were
Lagrangian method was applied to compute the trajectory of each
identified within these two flotation devices wherein the collision
particle and interaction between the fluid and particles was considered
numbers were quantified. The probability of collision due to streamline
as one-way coupling assuming the existence of particles to have a
effect of fine particles moving around the bubble was estimated. More
negligible effect on the turbulent flow. The simulation results suggested
recently, Nadeem et al. (2009) studied the collision probabilities of fine
bubble-particle collision increased when turbulence was taken into
particles with bubbles at intermediate Reynolds number using a sta-
consideration. This study indicates a combination of microscale simu-
tionary bubble and down coflowing particles. Collision probabilities in
lation of interactions between bubbles and particles with macroscale
quiescent flotation conditions were compared to the model of Yoon and
CFD simulations of flotation cells serves as a powerful tool in predicting
Luttrell and close agreement with the published data was obtained.
complex phenomena in a flotation cell. Hassanzadeh et al. (2018)
Sarrot et al. (2005) used direct numerical simulation (DNS) to study
comprehensively reviewed theoretical, numerical and experimental
the effects of the contamination degree of bubble’s surface on the col-
techniques for the study of particle–bubble collision efficiencies. Most
lision efficiency. The surface contamination was found to be an im-
of the CFD simulations of particle–bubble collisions were based on the
portant factor in the collision efficiency (Huang et al., 2012; Legendre
speculation that liquid environment was quiescent and experimental
et al., 2009). The surface of a bubble can be considered as fully mobile

Fig. 1. The CFD predictions of the bubble-particle collision efficiency for quartz particles of various sizes for an immobile bubble surface and Reynolds number 100
(Liu and Schwarz, 2009a).

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G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

Fig. 2. Comparisons between the predicted colli-

sion efficiencies for quartz particles and those
measured by Nguyen and Kmeť (1992). The CFD
predictions are shown for immobile and mobile
bubble surface, and with and without the bubble
surface effect (Liu and Schwarz, 2009a).

studies have mostly focused on a stationary bubble or a single bubble

rising in quiescent liquid. Nevertheless, particle-bubble collisions gen-
erally occur in intensive turbulence, likewise in stirrer region in a
mechanically stirred flotation tank, for maximizing collision effi-
ciencies. Turbulence intensity was found to enhance the bubble-particle
collision kernel and frequency (Ngo-Cong et al., 2018). It is recognized
that particle–bubble turbulent collision remains poorly quantified using
CFD method and there are no available quantitative experimental re-
sults for validation which need to be addressed in future research.

3.2. Bubble-particle attachment modelling

The local bubble-particle attachment rate has been calculated based

on the collision rate and collision probability (Koh and Schwarz, 2003).
Koh and Schwarz (2006) applied CFD simulation along with population
balance model to predict the net rate of bubble-particle attachment. The
probabilities of collision, adhesion and stabilization were also calcu-
lated such that net attachment rates could be estimated. The detach-
ment rates could also be estimated from the fluid turbulence. The net
rate of attachment, after accounting for detachments, was used in the
combined CFD kinetic model involving transient population-balance
simulations with the removal of bubble-particle aggregates to the froth
layer. The local turbulent energy dissipation rates used in the kinetic
model were obtained from CFD modelling of the cell. The transport of
solids within the pulp phase was modelled using the algebraic slip
model. The source terms included the pressure sources, the mass source
or sink of gas entering and leaving the vessel. The important interphase
forces included drag and buoyancy forces. The distribution of net at-
tachment rates is shown in Fig. 3. Net attachment rates in the stirrer
region was shown to be negative due to high detachment probability in
the high turbulent liquid flow.
3.3. Bubble-particle detachment modelling
Relatively little attention has been paid to bubble-particle detach-
ment in turbulent field compared to collision and attachment processes.
Schwarz (2016) developed a new formulation of turbulence rate con-
sidering the frequency of eddy-aggregate interactions (or “collisions”)
sufficiently energetic to cause detachment. Wang et al. (2017a) studied
the probability of particle detachment from a bubble using CFD mod-
elling with several different turbulence models, i.e. LES and RANS
models. LES and RANS models were compared in the simulation of
particle detachment as is shown in Fig. 4. LES with better resolution
gave a better prediction than RANS model. To overcome the defi-
ciencies of the current particle detachment model in the simulation of
the flotation process, a new detachment model has been developed
Fig. 3. CFD predicted net attachment rates (108 m−3 s−1) after flotation time of
320 s for particles of 60 μm diameter in the stirred cell (Koh and Schwarz,
2006).
from a different perspective, relating the centrifugal acceleration to the
vorticity in the flow field, where the vorticity calculation does not re-
quire the assumption of isotropic flow that is inherent in the dissipation
method. It shows that the new vorticity model has advantages over the
previous models which used the energy dissipation rate. It is interesting
to note that local dissipation rate could equally well be expressed in
terms of vorticity or shear rate since all these quantities are related. It is
noted that the study considered particles already attached to bubbles
and only bubble-particle detachment was considered.
3.4. Flotation rates modelling
Kostoglou et al. (2006) modelled the local flotation rate in a tur-
bulent flow field by incorporating collision and attachment between
particles and bubbles. It is noted that their model did not incorporate
the detachment of particles from bubbles. Collision and attachment
were considered not only through the settling and buoyancy motion,
but also the relative velocity between particles and bubbles and small-
scale structures of turbulence were considered. A composite expression

159
G. Wang et al.
Fig. 4. Contour plot of the particle detachment probabilities using the (a) LES, (b) RANS (Wang et al., 2017a).
was provided to compute the frequency of successful collisions between
the particles and bubbles using the earlier existing theories. The pro-
posed expression can be used to compute the local flotation rates in
complex flotation process equipment.
Koh and Schwarz (2008a,b) studied the effect of the bubble size
distribution on the prediction of flotation rate, where a population
balance model was used to calculate local bubble size distribution.
Numerical results suggested the bubble size had a significant effect on
the predicted flotation rates and an optimum bubble size was necessary
to yield the maximum flotation rate for a given particle size. The
maximum bubble loading under normal operation was predicted to be
around 20% coverage of the bubble surface. Koh and Smith (2011) later
explored the effect of stirring speed on the flotation rate, and an op-
timum stirring speed existed to achieve the maximum flotation rate. It
is believed that increasing stirring speed can enhance bubble-particle
collision. With further increase above optimum stirring speed, flotation
rate decreased due to the increased probability of bubble-particle de-
tachment.
Karimi et al. (2014a,b) developed a CFD model predicting the flo-
tation rate constants in a flotation tank with a standard Rushton tur-
bine. The flotation rate constant model includes the hydrodynamic
features of the turbulent flow and bubble-particle interactions. The
flotation rate constant was calculated for varying hydrophobicity, agi-
tation rate and superficial gas velocity with the considerations of local
flow. The flotation rate constant predicted by the CFD-based model was
validated against published experimental data. The results showed that
the CFD-kinetic model could improve the predictions of flotation rate
constant and successfully evaluate the effect of different operational
conditions on the flotation rate constant as is shown in Fig. 5. Never-
theless, it is noted that no consistent flotation rate model exists for
bubbles as different models of collision, attachment and detachment
can be incorporated into the flotation rate model.
Fayed and Ragab (2015) developed a CFD-based flotation model to
predict recovery rate of minerals in a Wemco cell of a self-aerated
mineral flotation machine. Effects of uniform bubble sizes on air holdup
and hydrodynamics were reported, and air holdup increased as bubble
size decreased. Energy dissipation rate and air volume fraction de-
termined from two-phase simulations were used as input for the flota-
tion kinetics model. The probability of collision, attachment and sta-
bilization were plotted across the cell. Therefore, recovery rate constant
was calculated for different bubble diameters and different particle
diameters in the presence of particle size distribution.
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Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
4. CFD of flotation equipment
4.1. Mechanically agitated cells
Most of the industrial flotation cells are mechanically agitated types
which are in operation for many years. There are several types of me-
chanically agitated flotation machines of industrial importance such as
WEMCO, Outokumpu cell. Two types of mechanical flotation cells,
defined according to the mechanism used for the air input, are em-
ployed in industrial applications, and they are forced-air and self-as-
pirated flotation cells. In mechanical flotation cells of forced-air type,
air is forced into the cell through air sparger or bubble distributor using
a blower. In mechanical flotation cells of self-aspirated type, the gas is
sucked into the flotation cell due to the low pressure created in the eye
of the impeller rotating at high-speed. Forced aeration cells have dis-
tinct advantages over self-aspirated cells which allows better control of
air input and bubble mass flux. Bubble mass flux is an important
parameter for flotation recovery which makes mechanically agitated
flotation cells to include forced aeration. The valuable minerals are
collected with froth as overflow product whereas remaining gangue
exits from the bottom. The mechanically agitated machines can only
operate with very fine solid particles in order to prevent wear and tear
of cell internals. Mechanically agitated machines are characterized by
the presence of large variation in the energy dissipation rates from
place to place in the flotation cell which might vary up to ten times. A
highly turbulent region is present near the impeller whereas turbulence
intensity in the region far away from the impeller decreases sig-
nificantly. High turbulence is characterized by high bubble-particle
collision probability but at the same time also involves a high prob-
ability of particle detachment.
Hydrodynamics in mechanically agitated flotation machines have
been studied extensively by various researchers, likewise at JKMRC,
Outotec, Virginia Tech, CSIRO, etc. (Koh and Smith, 2011; Murthy
et al., 2007, 2008; Yoon, 2000; Saravanan and Joshi, 1996, 1995;
Saravanan et al., 1994, 1996, 1997; Sawant and Joshi, 1979).
Patwardhan and Joshi (1999) have presented a comprehensive review
of self-inducing mechanically agitated contactors. Newell and Grano
(2007b) have studied the effect of operating parameters such as su-
perficial gas velocity, impeller rotational speed and frother (methyl
isobutyl carbinol, MIBC) concentration. Due to the complexity of phase
interactions in a flotation stirred tank and the limitations of experi-
mental techniques, CFD simulations have been widely applied to
G. Wang et al.
Fig. 5. Numerical predictions of the flotation rate constant for chalcopyrite as a function of particle size (Karimi et al., 2014a,b).
understand hydrodynamics in mechanically agitated flotation ma-
chines, as is shown in Table 2. The detailed understanding of flow
gained using this approach allows modifications to existing equipment
and identification of potential process improvements (Koh and
Schwarz, 2011, 2012).
In the simulation of mechanically agitated flotation machines, it is
important to consider interactions between different phases. Koh et al.
(2000) first presented a CFD-based flotation model where an Eulerian-
Eulerian approach was applied to simulate hydrodynamics in a stirred
tank type mineral flotation cell. Fig. 6 shows the schematic diagrams of
flotation cells. Particles were assumed to be uniformly dispersed in the
flotation cell, and a uniform bubble diameter of size 1 mm was con-
sidered. The system consisted two-phase flow of pulp and bubbles. A
bubble-particle collision rate model proposed by Abrahamson (1975)
was incorporated into the CFD model with inputs from hydrodynamics
simulation. Contours of bubble-particle collision rate were plotted
across the flotation tank, and the stirred tank proved to be superior in
achieving high collision rates. This method is useful for locating posi-
tions within flotation cells where bubbles contact particles and is
helpful for design modifications leading to flotation performance im-
provements. This method was further developed to account for local
attachment rate (Koh and Schwarz, 2003). Attachment probability was
assumed to be 1, and attachment rate was calculated based on the
collision rate and collision probability. Collision rate was normalized by
initial particle concentration and was shown insensitive to particle size.
The collision probability decreased significantly with decreasing par-
ticle size. Therefore, results showed the attachment rate decreased with
decreasing particle size. Koh et al. (2003) further developed CFD
models of commercial flotation cells to provide a detailed under-
standing of the hydrodynamics in Metso and Outokumpu cells. Results
were compared with LDA measurements and CFD simulations showed
good agreement without using any fitting parameters.
It is noted that particles were considered uniformly distributed in
the pulp in the early studies, therefore, particles were not explicitly
considered. A population balance for particles was modelled as a first-
order rate process with source and sink terms in work by (Koh and
Schwarz, 2006) where flotation kinetics model was considered by
modelling bubble-particle attachments in a flotation cell. Collision
model (Yoon and Luttrell, 1989), attachment model (Yoon and Luttrell,
1989) and detachment model (Bloom and Heindel, 2003) were selected
to account for interactions between particles and bubbles. The pre-
dicted flotation rate constants showed high values at intermediate sized
161
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
particles of 120–240 μm. The results of CFD simulations of mechani-
cally agitated flotation machines showed that the bubble-particle de-
tachment rates were higher near the impeller tip, but the maximum
attachment rates were outside the impeller zone (Koh and Schwarz,
2006). They observed that the particle recovery rate to the pulp-froth
interface were much lower than the net attachment rates due to higher
detachments. For the case studied, they found that the bubbles were
loaded with particles very quickly, and the bubble surface area flux was
the limiting factor in the recovery rate.
Instead of using a population balance model to simulate particles,
Lichter et al. (2007) used Discrete Element Simulation (DEM) to track
individual particles with the purpose of exploring the effect of cell size
and inflow rate on the retention time distribution in a Metso RCS Flo-
tation Cell. Loading capacity of the impeller, and the volumetric feed
rate could be determined from the simulations. Feed bypass was
quantified with the residence time distribution of particles modelled by
the DEM method. A combination of CFD with DEM provided a deep
understanding on how changes in operating conditions may affect the
transport of material through the cell, therefore provided a detailed
insight on the effect of design parameters on the performance of the
flotation cell. Similarly, Mirgaux et al. (2009) simulated the removal of
inclusions by flotation in a mechanically stirred tank using an Eulerian-
Lagrangian approach. A standard k-ε turbulence model was used to
simulate liquid aluminium-bubbles turbulent flow. Local agglomeration
and flotation frequencies were calculated using local fluid flow prop-
erties. Population balance equation and transport equation were com-
bined to describe the removal of inclusions. Different operating con-
ditions were compared, and removal of inclusion was found efficient for
a high rotor speed with a low gas flow rate than a low rotor speed with
high gas flow rate.
Koh and Schwarz (2007) developed a CFD model of a self-aerating
Denver flotation cell, where air was sucked into the slurry by the ro-
tation of the impeller. An Eulerian-Eulerian approach was applied to
simulate a liquid-air system with a standard k-ε turbulence model in
calculating kinetic energy and energy dissipation rate. Flotation ki-
netics models previously reported by Koh and Schwarz (2006) were
incorporated into the CFD model with inputs of localized energy dis-
sipation rate, bubble loading, etc. A population balance model was
applied to particle concentration model with source and sink terms
specifying attachment and detachment respectively. The maximum
loading capacity of a bubble was assumed to be half monolayer cov-
erage. The rate of air flow was dependent on the suction pressure
 Table 2
CFD modelling studies on mechanical agitated cells.
Refs. Geometry Mesh and software Operating conditions Phase details turbulence model, Objective
G. Wang et al.

impeller modelling

Koh et al. (2000) 1. CSIRO flotation cell CFX-4 Impeller speeds CSIRO Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To study bubble-particle collision rate across the
volume 3.78 L, impeller flotation cell at 1200 rpm Pulp and gas sliding mesh flotation cells. The performances were compared
diameter 72 mm Rushton turbine at 840 rpm bubble diameter 1 mm from the profiles of collision rates.
2. A flat-bottomed
cylindrical tank
diameter 0.195 m
A standard Rushton
turbine diameter
D = T/3
Koh and Schwarz CSIRO flotation cell, CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds 800, 1000 Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To calculate the bubble–particle collision rates in
(2003a) volume 3.78 L, impeller and 1200 rpm. liquid, solid and gas bubble sizes 1.10, multiple frames of different parts of the cell from the local turbulent
diameter 72 mm Air is injected at a rate of 8 L/ 1.05 and 1.00 mm reference velocities, and the size and number concentrations
min Particle diameter of bubbles and particles
7.5, 15, 30, 60 μm
Koh and Schwarz Metso cell CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds in Metso cell Liquid phase Standard k-ε To provide detailed understanding of the
(2003b) Outokumpu cell Metso cell 596 rpm sliding mesh hydrodynamics in Metso and Outokumpu cells.
Tank diameter 1.07 m 156,820 grid points In Outokumpu cell Multiple reference Results are compared with LDA measurements and
Liquid volume 0.8 m3 Outokumpu cell 328 rpm frame CFD simulations show good agreement without
146,912 grid points using any fitting parameters.
Tiitinen (2003) Outokumpu TankCell Fluent 5.5 Impeller speeds Liquid phase Standard k-ε To study the effects of different grid types on
Tank diameter 3600 mm 100 and 160 rpm Multiple reference hydrodynamics simulation in an Outokumpu
Tank height frame TankCell and no grid dependency was found.
3600 mm
Rotor diameter 825 mm

162
Koh and Schwarz A flat-bottomed CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds 600 and Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To predict the probabilities of collision, adhesion
(2006) cylindrical tank diameter 840 rpm average bubble diameter 1 mm Multiple reference and stabilization at each location in the flotation
0.195 m monosized particles diameter frame cell, and therefore to calculate the net rate of
A standard Rushton 7.5, 15, 30, 60 120, 240, 480 μm attachment.
turbine diameter
D = T/3
Deglon and Meyer A flat-bottomed Fluent 6.1 Impeller speeds Liquid phase Standard k-ε To demonstrate that the Multiple Reference Frames
(2006) cylindrical tank 33,000, 230,000, 800,000, corresponding to Reynolds Multiple reference and the standard k-ε turbulence model can
diameter 15 cm 1,900,000 control volumes numbers frame accurately model turbulent fluid flow provided very
A standard Rushton 0.5 ⩽ NRe ⩽ 60,000 fine grids.
turbine diameter
D = T/3
Lichter et al. (2007) Metso RCS Flotation Cell Fluent 6.1.22 Feed flow rate CFD + DEM Standard k-ε To study the effect of cell size and inflow rate on
volume 0.21–1.16 m3/s Pulp phase, particles flotation bank retention time distribution and
50 m3 and 160 m3 300 µm performance
Diameter 4.5 m 100 µm
Diameter 6.5 m 50 µm
Koh and Schwarz Denver flotation cell CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds 1200, 1800 Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To investigate the effect of impeller speed on the air
(2007) volume 5.3 L eight- 103,000 grid points and 2300 rpm liquid, gas Multiple reference flow in a self-aerated Denver laboratory flotation
bladed impeller diameter average bubble diameter 1 mm frame cell.
72 mm
Koh and Schwarz Denver flotation cell CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds 1200 Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To study the effect of the bubble size distribution
(2008a,b) volume 5.3 L eight- 103,000 grid points air mass flow rate liquid, gas Multiple reference and particle size distribution in a Denver flotation
bladed impeller diameter 3.3 × 10−5 kg/s bubble size distribution modeled using frame cell.
72 mm the multiple-size-group
particle accounted by applying source and
sink terms for particle number
concentration in a population-balance
equation
(continued on next page)
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
 Table 2 (continued)

Refs. Geometry Mesh and software Operating conditions Phase details turbulence model, Objective
impeller modelling
G. Wang et al.

Mirgaux et al. (2009) Cylindrical tank inner FIDAP Impeller speeds 250, 500 rpm Euler–Lagrange Standard k-ε To study the removal of inclusions by flotation in a
diameter 0.33 m 2040 cells Gas Flow Rate liquid, gas mechanical stirred tank
Alpur rotor diameter 0.5, 1.5 m3/h Bubbles are solid spheres with a constant
0.155 m and unique diameter
height 0.075 m
Bakker et al. (2009) PBT tank Fluent 6.3 Impeller speeds Liquid phase non-Newtonian fluids Laminar To study a single phase non-Newtonian fluid flow in
Bateman flotation cell PBT 260 000 cells PBT 68–367 standard k-ε a mechanical flotation cell
Tank diameter 540 mm Bateman 778 700 cells Bateman 300, 450 and shear-stress transport
600 rpm (SST)
k-ω turbulence
multiple frames of
reference
Xia et al. (2009) Outotec flotation cell Fluent Not available Liquid phase Realizable k-ε standard To compare three turbulence models in predicting
705,100 k-ε Reynolds stress flows in an Outotec flotation cell
599,000 model (RSM)
395,000 cells moving reference
frame
Zhou et al. (2010) KYF-320 flotation cell CFX 2005 Impeller speed 107 rpm Euler two fluid Standard k-ε To study the hydrodynamics features of gas-liquid
432,110 mesh gas flow rate liquid, gas flow in a KYF-320 flotation cell
46.92 m3/min.
Koh and Smith (2011) Denver flotation cell CFX-4.4 Impeller speeds 1050, 1200 Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To study an optimum stirring speed that produces a
volume 3 L 100,000 nodes and 1500 rpm liquid, gas multiple frames of good compromise between attachment and
impeller diameter 72 mm air flow rate 8 L min−1 constant bubble size 1.0 mm reference detachment for a given particle size.
particle accounted by applying source and
sink terms for particle number

163
concentration in a population-balance
equation
Ghaffari and Karimi Centrifugal flotation cell FLUENT 6.3 Impeller speeds, 125, 150, Eulerian–Eulerian Standard k-ε To simulate the influence of turbulence on
(2012) 175, 200, and 225 rpm liquid, gas, particle distributions of particles and bubbles in the
particle diameter 53 µm centrifugal flotation cell
bubble diameter 1000 µm
Salem-Said et al. Dorr-Oliver machine CFX5 Air flow rate 2.63 m3/min Eulerian-Eulerian Shear stress transport To study air-liquid hydrodynamics in a forced-air
(2012, 2013) Volume 6 m3 liquid, gas multiple frames of mechanically stirred Dorr-Oliver machine
monosized bubble diameter reference
0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 mm
Szczygieł et al. (2013) Aerator WD and ZK FLUENT Impeller speed 30 rad/s, Liquid phase Standard k-ε To compare Multiple frames of reference method to
Multiple frames of sliding mesh method in simulating a single phase
reference and sliding flow in a flotation machine.
mesh method
Shi et al. (2014) KYF flotation cell CFX 14.0. Impeller speed 195–315 rpm Liquid phase Standard k-ε To help the impeller design of KYF flotation cells
Volume 0.2 m3 multiple frames of
Inner diameter 700 mm reference
Karimi et al. (2014a,b) A flotation tank with a FLUENT Impeller speed 350–800 rpm Eulerian-Eulerian Dispersed k-ε To develop a CFD model capable of predicting the
standard Rushton turbine 235,872 elements slurry air bubbles multiple frames of flotation rate constants
Diameter 145 mm reference
Impeller diameter 50 mm
Kuang et al. (2015) self-aerated Wemco ANSYS/CFX 16.0 Impeller speed 182 rpm Liquid phase Standard k-ε To obtain a detailed understanding of water flow in
inner diameter 1370 mm 639,100 nodes Multiple Reference a Wemco cell using CFD and PIV.
height 1070 mm Frames
Shen et al. (2015) KYF-320 492,218 cells Impeller speed 80 r/min Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε, k-ω and To compare different turbulence models in
liquid, gas realizable k-ε simulating gas-liquid two phases flow in a air-
blowing mechanical flotation cell.
Fayed and Ragab Wemco 0.8 m3 CFX 12.0 Impeller speed 620 rpm Shear stress transport To simulate gas-liquid flow in a Wemco cell of a self-
(2015) nodes 2.4 × 106 (SST) aerated mineral flotation machine
(continued on next page)
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

coming from the trailing side of blades of the impeller, which was de-

To compare liquid mixing in stirred tanks fitted with

termined by the rotational speed of the impeller. The predicted air flow

Rushton turbine and standard flotation impeller.

distribution in stirred tanks fitted with Rushton

rate increased with impeller speed and compared favourably against

To investigate the steady-state bubble size

measured values. The effect of attachment of particles on bubbles was

turbine and standard flotation impeller

considered through the decrease in the bubble rise velocity, which
caused a decrease in flotation rate. Results were compared between
different particles with sizes of 15 µm, 60 µm and 120 µm, and fine
particles were shown to attach predominately inside the shroud with
high bubble loading.
Koh and Schwarz (2008a,b) extended the model to study the effect
of the bubble size distribution on the prediction of flotation rate. A
population balance model was used to calculate local bubble size dis-
Objective

tribution. Bubble breakage model of Luo and Svendsen (1996) and

bubble coalescence model of Prince and Blanch (1990) were applied to
account for bubble breakage and bubble coalescence. Evans et al.
Standard k-ε, realizable

(2008) further discussed the hydrodynamics of gas-liquid two-phase

Standard k-ε dispersed

flow in a Denver cell. Local average bubble size was calculated from a
impeller modelling
turbulence model,

turbulence model

bubble number density equation. Flotation kinetics model was in-

corporated into the CFD modelling of the cell with inputs of local tur-
bulent energy dissipation rates provided by CFD modelling of the cell.
In the work by Koh and Schwarz (2008a,b), CFD results suggested the
k-ε

maximum bubble loading at 0.2 fractional coverage of the bubble

surface under normal operation. The bubble size distribution had a
uniform bubble sizes 0.5, 0.7 and 1.0 mm

significant effect on the predicted flotation rate, and an optimum

bubble size existed to give the maximum flotation rate for a given
particle size. Koh and Smith (2011) explored the effect of stirring speed
for a constant air flow in a Denver flotation cell. The simulation results
were in good agreement with experimental work and net attachment
rates varied across the flotation cell due to varying hydrodynamics in
Eulerian-Eulerian

Eulerian-Eulerian

different locations of the cell. An optimum stirring speed existed to

Phase details

achieve the maximum flotation rate, which was the result of a good
Liquid phase
liquid, gas

liquid, gas

compromise between bubble-particle attachment and detachment.

In predicting flotation rate, Karimi et al. (2014b) used an Eulerian-
Eulerian multiphase model to simulate a slurry (i.e. solid and water)
and air system in a standard Rushton turbine flotation tank. The dis-
Reynolds number are 29,000,

persed k-ε turbulence model was employed to calculate the turbulent

40,000, 80,000, 120,000.

Superficial gas velocity

flow in the system. A flotation rate constant model, consisting of me-

0.26 cm/s, 0.50 cm/s.
Operating conditions

chanical aspect of the cell, the hydrodynamic features of the turbulent

flow and micro phenomena inside the tank (collisions, attachment and
Impeller speed

Flotation tank
300, 390 rpm

100, 250 rpm

Gassing rate
Stirred tank

detachment between particles and bubbles), was calculated for varying

0.62 cm/s
0.7 vvm

hydrophobicity, agitation rate and superficial gas velocity with input of

local values of hydrodynamic properties of the flow. The flotation rate
constant predicted by the CFD-based model was validated against
published experimental data (Karimi et al., 2014a). The results showed
that the CFD-kinetic model could improve the predictions of flotation
ANSYS ICEM CFD 14.5

ANSYS Fluent 15.07

rate constant and successfully evaluate the effect of different opera-

Mesh and software

tional conditions on the flotation rate constant.

500–600 k cells

A combination of CFD model with flotation kinetics has been proven

558,830 cells

to be a novel approach to flotation cell design as bubble-particle at-

205,048
317,258
89,152

tachment and detachment rates can be predicted from detailed hydro-

dynamics (Koh and Schwarz, 2012). It is noted in the above literature
that interactions between particles and bubbles were considered whe-
standard Rushton turbine
with a standard Rushton
Tank diameter 300 mm

Tank diameter 630 mm

Tank diameter 600 mm

ther particles were assumed evenly distributed or individually tracked.

A stirred tank with a
Tank height 300 mm

Tank height 630 mm

Tank height 600 mm

Nevertheless, much work has been carried out to study multiphase

Flotation impeller

Flotation impeller
diameter 75, 100,

Impeller diameter
turbine Diameter
A flotation tank

A flotation tank

hydrodynamics in mechanically agitated flotation machines without

incorporating flotation kinetics. Zhou et al. (2010) simulated the hy-
Geometry

diameter

drodynamic features of gas-liquid flow in a large-scale flotation cell.

100 mm

150 mm

210 mm

150 mm

The Eulerian two-fluid method was applied, and a standard k-ε model
was used to simulate the influence of turbulence on the distribution of
gas holdup. The results showed little gas in the bottom of the tank, and
Miskovic (2016)
Basavarajappa et al.
Table 2 (continued)

(2015a, 2015b)

Basavarajappa and

the gas volume fraction value was highest in the mixing area.
Ghaffari and Karimi (2012) modelled multiphase flow in a cen-
trifugal flotation cell to find the optimum conditions with a standard k-ε
turbulence model applied to simulate the influence of turbulence on the
Refs.

distributions of particles and bubbles in the centrifugal flotation cell.

The Eulerian multiphase model was used to simulate water, particles

164
G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of flotation cells. (a) A flotation tank with a Rushton turbine, (b) Denver cell.

Fig. 7. Contour plots showing mean volume fraction of gas at different conditions in the flotation cell: (a) N = 100 RPM and Jg = 0.26 cm/s, (b) N = 250 RPM and
Jg = 0.26 cm/s, (c) N = 250 RPM and Jg = 0.50 cm/s, (d) N = 350 RPM and Jg = 0.62 cm/s (Basavarajappa and Miskovic, 2016).

165
G. Wang et al.
and bubbles. Interactions between phases were accounted by phase
interaction force in the momentum equation. Flotation models of col-
lision between particles and bubbles, attachment of particles to bubbles
and detachment of particles from bubbles were not considered. Simu-
lations with different rotational speeds were carried out, and velocity of
175 rpm was identified as optimum for the case studied.
Instead of using a standard k-ε turbulence model, Salem-Said et al.
(2012, 2013), used a shear stress transport turbulence model to simu-
late the hydrodynamics of turbulent flow in a forced-air mechanically
stirred Dorr-Oliver machine. An Eulerian-Eulerian model was applied in
the simulation of two-phase (water and air) flow in the cell. Air was
injected into the rotor at a rate of 2.63 m3/min with an assumption of a
uniform bubble diameter. Air volume fraction contours, velocity pro-
files and turbulent kinetic energy profiles were presented at different
parts of the machine. The results showed that bubble diameter had
significant effects on gas holdup with smaller bubble diameter resulting
into higher gas holdup. A similar trend was also observed by Fayed and
Ragab (2015) where an Eulerian-Eulerian two-phase model was used in
the simulation of gas-liquid flow in a Wemco cell of a self-aerated mi-
neral flotation machine. Different turbulence models i.e. k-ε, k-ω and
realizable k-ε were compared by Shen et al. (2015) in simulating gas-
liquid two-phase flow in a 320 m3 air-blowing mechanical flotation cell.
The results showed similar phenomena of two obvious recirculation
zones in the mixing zones. Nevertheless, differences in the distributions
of the gas-liquid two-phase flow were observed for different turbulence
models.
Considering the importance of the distribution of bubble size in the
flotation process, and most of the previous studies considered mono
bubble size, Basavarajappa and Miskovic (2016) explored the steady-
state bubble size distribution in a stirred tank fitted with a Rushton
turbine and a generic lab-scale flotation cell equipped with a standard
flotation impeller. The quadrature method of moments (QMOM) tech-
nique was used to solve the population balance equation of bubbles. A
high-order moment-conserving method of classes (HMMC) was applied
to study the effect of turbulence dissipation rate on the bubble size
distribution (Basavarajappa et al., 2015b, 2017). A combination of CFD
with PBM was applied to study and characterize different flow regimes
and gas dispersion behavior occurring at different aeration rates and
impeller rotation speeds. Four different flow regimes, i.e. flooding,
loading, transition and recirculating, were shown at different operating
conditions, as is shown in Fig. 7. Flooding and loading regimes were
found at low impeller speeds for the lower range of aeration rates while
transition and recirculating regimes were observed at higher impeller
speeds. The distribution of predicted bubble diameter in the flotation
cell indicated that smaller bubbles concentrated near the high turbu-
lence impeller stream, the lower recirculation region, and close to the
tank walls. However, large bubbles were formed in the upper tank re-
gion and concentrated around the shaft during the flooding, loading,
and transition flow regimes.
Attention should also be paid to the study of single-phase flow in
mechanically agitated flotation machines. Tiitinen (2003) used a stan-
dard k-ε turbulence model to simulate hydrodynamics of liquid flow in
an Outokumpu tank with an OK rotor-stator mixing device. A hybrid
grid was generated with unstructured cells in the rotor domain and
structured cells in the stator and tank domain. Multiple frames of re-
ference method was applied to account for the rotation of the rotor.
Velocity field, pressure field and turbulent magnitudes were compared
between structured and unstructured grid types. Comparisons with
Laser Doppler Velocimetry measurements found predictions of the ve-
locity field to be in accordance with experimental results, but simula-
tions gave lower kinetic energy.
In relation to the numerical considerations when modeling a stirred
flotation tank, the standard k-ε turbulence model, which is commonly
used in engineering CFD simulations of stirred tanks, can accurately
model turbulent fluid flow provided very fine grids (Deglon and Meyer,
2006). It was found that the general flow field and mean fluid velocity
166
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
predictions were not strongly influenced by either the grid resolution or
discretization scheme, whilst, the turbulent kinetic energy predictions
were strongly influenced by both the grid resolution and discretization
scheme. It should be noted that the hydrodynamics in stirred tanks
equipped with different impellers have been widely studied around the
world. A comprehensive literature on CFD simulations of stirred tanks
was done by Joshi et al. (2011, 2012). Though most of the work is not
directly connected to mechanically agitated flotation machines,
knowledge gained can be informative to the CFD studies of mechani-
cally agitated flotation machines.
A single-phase model can be applied to the simulation of the pulp
phase flow where particles distributed in the water. Bakker et al. (2009)
modelled a single phase non-Newtonian fluid flow in a mechanically
agitated flotation cell. The Herschel-Bulkley non-Newtonian model was
applied to represent slurry rheology with constants derived from ex-
perimental data. The same model was also applied by Koh and Schwarz
(2008a,b) to simulate the performance of a non-Newtonian slurry in an
Outokumpu tank cell as used at Mt Keith. In the work by Bakker et al.
(2009), two turbulence models, a standard k-ε model and a shear stress
transport k-w model, were compared in the simulation of cavern for-
mation around the stator. The size of the cavern was found to be in-
versely proportional to the yield stress and viscosity. The k-w model
was shown to predict the cavern boundary accurately. Bakker et al.
(2010) developed a cavern model to calculate the height of caverns
forming in non-Newtonian mineral slurries in mechanical flotation
cells. The model can be used to get an estimation of the extent of the
mixed slurry in flotation cells
Instead of using a standard k-ε turbulence model, Xia et al. (2009)
compared different turbulence models on the prediction of fluid flow in
an Outotec flotation cell. Three different turbulence models, i.e. a
standard k-ε turbulence model, a realizable k-ε turbulence model and a
Reynolds stress model, were used to simulate hydrodynamics of water
flow. Two main recirculation zones were formed in the cell, and a re-
circulation zone occurred behind each rotor blade. Pressure coefficient
contours were plotted and high values were found in the top region of
the stator blades, and in the outer rim region of the rotor blades, in-
dicating positions of serious wear. Similar bulk flow patterns were
presented for three different turbulence models. Nevertheless, local
flow variables were shown to be different and the authors therefore
recommend that an advanced turbulence model should be used for
accurate solutions.
When simulating the rotation of the stirrer, multiple frames of re-
ference and sliding mesh are generally used. Multiple frames of re-
ference method was compared to sliding mesh method in resolving
rotor revolution by Szczygieł et al. (2013) where a standard k-ε tur-
bulence model was used to simulate a single-phase flow in a flotation
machine. Results showed that multiple frames of reference appeared to
be a good compromise as sliding mesh consumed much computational
time. Simulation results were compared to experimental measurements
by PIV and a satisfactory agreement in velocity field was found in the
region close to the aerator. Shi et al. (2014) also used PIV measure-
ments combined with CFD simulations to analyse the influence of the
angle of the impeller blades on the flow field characteristics. A standard
k-ε turbulence model was used to simulate the hydrodynamics of water
flow around rotor and stator. Similar flow patterns with upper and
lower circulations were achieved for the backward impeller, radial
impeller and forward impeller. Circulation volumes of the backward
impeller and radial impeller were approximately 7% larger than that of
the forward impeller. The power consumption of the backward impeller
was 13% less than that of the radial impeller and 19% less than that of
the forward impeller.
Basavarajappa et al. (2015a) compared two different impellers, a
Rushton turbine and a standard flotation impeller, in the liquid mixing
in stirred tanks. A realizable k-ε turbulence model was used as it per-
formed better than the standard k-ε model for flows with streamline
curvature, vortices, and rotation (Basavarajappa and Miskovic, 2013).
G. Wang et al.
Fig. 8. A schematic view of conventional flotation column.
The flotation impeller was shown to generate strong radial and tan-
gential velocities characterized by the mean flow close to the impeller.
Trailing vortices were revealed behind the impeller blades by swirling
strength visualization. Mean flow changed from radial flow to axial
flow for the flotation impeller with a diameter of 100 mm when the off-
bottom clearance was reduced. Power numbers were calculated from
the volume averaged dissipation rate of turbulence kinetic energy. The
results could help in understanding the effect of impeller design on local
and bulk flow characteristics.
4.2. Flotation columns
A traditional flotation column is essentially a counter-current
bubble column (Fig. 8) wherein a slurry stream is fed at a certain height
near the top of the column and compressed air is introduced through a
sparger at the column bottom just above the tailing outlet. The flow
domain inside the column is characterized by the presence of two dis-
tinct zones: collection zone and cleaning zone. The collection zone
(pulp zone) generally operates in a bubbly flow (or homogeneous) re-
gime whereas the cleaning zone (froth zone) is operated in a froth re-
gime. The particles moving downwards collide with the rising air
bubbles in the collection zone. The floatable particles attached to the
bubbles move to the cleaning zone with the bubbles. The non-floatable
particles move through the bottom of the column, thus performing the
separation. Wash water is added from an array of perforated pipes in
the cleaning zone, which is responsible for the froth stabilization as well
as upgrading of the product.
In the last few decades, there have been many modifications in
column designs to increase the recovery. Some of these are Leeds
column, Packed column, Flotaire column, Hydrochem column, Jameson
column, Microcel column, Cyclonic column and Cyclo-micro bubble
column. The major disadvantages of flotation columns are the mixing in
the axis of the column, the blockage of spargers and problems incurred
in installations due to the column height. The bubble size depends upon
various factors such as sparger material (hole size, shape, flexibility, the
density of holes), sparger surface area, superficial gas velocity and fluid
shear. In industrial flotation machines, the bubble size (approximately
167
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
1 mm) is typically 20 times the size of the hole, and thus overlap of
holes in generating bubbles can be expected. The bubble size distribu-
tion in the cell is determined by three phenomena: bubble formation,
coalescence and break-up. The presence of small amount of surface
active agents can lead to significant reductions in mean bubble size
(Aston et al., 1983; Cho and Laskowski, 2002; Tucker et al., 1994). The
use of smaller bubbles is the most effective approach to increase the
probability of collision and reduce the probability of detachment.
In the early studies of models of flotation columns, most of the
models were one-dimensional, and among them, the most commonly
used is the axial dispersion model (Dobby and Finch, 1986; Ityokumbul,
1992; Mavros et al., 1989; Xu et al., 1991). A list of CFD work on flo-
tation columns is shown in Table 3. The first published work concerning
the application of computational fluid dynamics to simulate flotation
columns was reported by Deng et al. (1996), and a two-dimensional
fluid dynamic model was developed to simulate liquid and gas flow
patterns in a flotation column. Laminar flow was considered in the
study and drag force was considered between water and air bubbles.
Axial liquid velocity varied in the radial direction in a way that in the
central part of the column the velocity was upward and in the near wall
region the velocity was downward. The presence of a circulating flow
structure in the flotation column was revealed to be one of the primary
reasons for mixing in column flotation. To avoid circulating flow
structure and obtain good mixing, Xia et al. (2006) studied the liquid-
gas flow in the open, baffled and packed flotation columns. The fluid
motion was simulated by directly solving the two-dimensional Navier-
Stokes equations using a SIMPLE approach and motions of bubbles were
modelled by the Lagrangian equation. The effect of baffles and packings
were analysed on dampening the effects of global back mixing, which is
harmful to mineral separations. The results showed the inclusion of
horizontal baffles or corrugated packings could dampen the back-
mixing but cannot totally remove detrimental vortexes in the column.
Meanwhile, it caused a higher pressure drop along the axial direction of
the column. The effects of a vertical baffle on the axial mixing in a
flotation column was studied by Farzanegan et al. (2017). It was shown
that the baffle divided the flotation column into two parallel columns.
It is noted that previous studies of the simulations of flotation
column considered liquid flow in the laminar flow range. Chakraborty
et al. (2009) used a standard k-ε model to model the turbulence in the
continuous phase. An Eulerian-Eulerian model was used to simulate the
gas-liquid two-phase flow in the flotation column. The influence of
superficial gas velocity, column size, sparger arrangement, and taper
angle on the hydrodynamics of the column flotation cell was studied. It
was found that increasing air flow rate resulted in an increase in gas
holdup and complexity in the plume structure. The uniform gas dis-
tribution was found to obtain an excellent gas holdup and stable flow
field in a bubble column.
Flotation kinetics in the flotation columns were not computationally
simulated, until Koh and Schwarz (2009) studied the cell hydro-
dynamics in a Microcel column and Jameson cell in relation to bubble-
particle attachment and detachment. Liquid velocities, turbulent dis-
sipation rates, gas hold-up, bubble-particle attachment rates and de-
tachment rates were obtained from CFD simulations. In the CFD si-
mulations of flotation equipment, the attachment and detachment rates
per particle were used for comparing cell performance. A mean bubble
size of 1 mm was used in the simulations. It was found that the local
value of bubble-particle detachment rate was directly related to the
local turbulent dissipation rate. Increase in turbulence in the tank was
shown to decrease the maximum floatable size of particles by Sahbaz
et al. (2012) where the high turbulent region and its effect on the upper
floatable size limit in the Jameson cell were studied. A standard k-ε
mixture model was employed to simulate the flow characteristics and
hydrodynamic behaviour of water-gas two-phase flow in the cell. The
results showed two main turbulent regions of mixing zone in the upper
part of the downcomer and critical region at the separation tank.
It is noted that previous studies considered bubbles of constant size.
G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

Table 3
CFD modelling studies on flotation columns.
Refs. Geometry Mesh and software Phase details turbulence Objective
model

Deng et al. 2D, 9 × 5, 11 × 7, 21 × 15 Inhouse Eulerian- Eulerian Laminar flow To study the circulation of the liquid flow
(1996) Length = 2.0 m code Single bubble size in flotation column caused by gas flow
Diameter = 0.2 m, rather than by dispersion.
Xia et al. (2006) 2D, Inhouse code Euler–Lagrangian model Laminar flow To investigate the effect of baffles and
Open column Fluid-bubbles packing on liquid back-mixing in the open
Width = 0.20 m Single bubble size flotation columns
Height = 1.00 m
Horizontal baffled column
Width = 0.20 m
Height = 1.0 m
Packed column
Width = 0.28 m
Height = 1.0 m
Chakraborty 3D, 10,260, 26,400, 33,000, 46,500, Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To study the influence of superficial gas
et al. (2009) Diameter = 0.25 m 62,000 velocity, column size, sparger
Height = 0.25–2.0 m CFX 10.0 arrangement, and taper angle on
hydrodynamics of the column flotation
cell.
Koh and Schwarz 3D, CFX-4.4 Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To model the cell hydrodynamics in a
(2009) Microcel flotation column bubble diameter 1 mm Microcel column and Jameson cell in
diameter = 4.9 m Particle diameter 250 µm relating to particle-bubble attachment and
height = 10.7 m detachment.
standard B6000-20
Jameson cell
diameter = 6 m
Sahbaz et al. 3D, FLUENT Eulerian- Eulerian Standard k-ε To predict the high turbulent regions and
(2012) Downcomer its effect on the upper floatable size limit in
diameter = 20 mm a Jameson cell
separation tank
diameter = 200 mm
Yan et al. (2012) 3D, 278,400 FLUENT Liquid phase Standard k-ε To investigate the hydrodynamic flow in a
Diameter = 1 m cyclonic-static micro-bubble flotation
Height = 4 m column.
Gong et al. 3D, 6 709 183 Eulerian-VOF Standard k-ε, To study the distributions of velocity,
(2015) Height = 0.858 m FLUENT RNG k-ε, pathlines, turbulent intensity and turbulent
Diameter = 0.12 m realizable k-ε kinetic energy in a cyclonic-static micro-
bubble flotation column
Wang et al. 3D, 280,000 Liquid phase Standard k-ε, To explore the effect of cone angles on
(2015) Diameter = 190 mm FLUENT RSM-S, RSM-L liquid-phase flow in a cyclonic-static
Height = 1400 mm micro-bubble flotation column
Sarhan et al. 3D, 200, 127 Eulerian-Eulerianv Standard k-ε To study the effect of solid particle on
(2016) Diameter = 0.1 m 160, 343 elements particles diameter bubble break-up and bubble coalescence
Height = 1.68 m AVL-FIRE 2009.2 63 μm rate in the flotation cell at different
PBM superficial gas velocity values.
Cai et al. (2016) 3D, Grid elements 104232, 218347, Eulerian-Eulerian RNG k-ε To study the oil–water separation
Diameter = 0.4 m 424608, 614824, and 1034500, PBM to model oil droplet characteristics in a flotation column.
Height = 1.675 m ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 size.
Cai et al. (2017) 3D, Grid elements 110,000 Eulerian-Eulerian Not mentioned. To study dynamic characteristics of oil-
outer pipe Inner ANSYS FLUENT 15.0 PBM to model oil droplet water separation in loop flotation column.
diameter = 100 mm size.
Height = 1200 mm
inner pipe Inner
diameter = 60 mm
Height = 1100 mm.
Sarhan et al. 3D, 11,250 and 19,675 elements Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To study the effect of bubble-particle
(2017a) Diameter = 0.36 m AVL FIRE, v.2014 gas, liquid and solid aggregate density on the flow dynamics
Height = 4 m Particles diameter
41 μm
PBM to model bubble size
in the range from 0.5 mm to
4.0 mm.
Sarhan et al. 3D, 50,343 and 154,787 elements Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To study the effect of particle type, density,
(2017b) Diameter = 0.1 m AVL FIRE, v.2014 gas, liquid and solid wettability and concentration on gas
Height = 1.66 m Particles diameter holdup and bubble hydrodynamics.
64 μm
PBM to model bubble size
in the range from 0.5 mm to
4.0 mm.
Zhang et al. 3D, 380,000, STAR-CCM + 9.06.009 Liquid phase Standard k-ε To study the effect of packed fluid guiding
(2017) Diameter = 4 m media on improving flotation recovery
height = 8 m
(continued on next page)

168
G. Wang et al.
Table 3 (continued)
Refs. Geometry Mesh and software
Wang et al. 3D, 406,684, ANSYS ICEM CFD 14.5
(2017a, Length = 120 mm
2017b) Diameter = 10 mm
Farzanegan et al. 3D, 381,481 mesh numbers
(2017) Height = 3.2 m ANSYS FLUENT 15.0
Diameter = 10 cm.
Fig. 9. Predicted gas volume fraction distribution for flotation column with
10% volume fraction of coal particles at superficial gas velocity of (a) 0.64, (b)
1.07, (c) 1.49, (d) 1.91, (e) 2.33, and (b) 2.76, cm s−1 (Sarhan et al., 2017a,b).
The coalescence and break-up of bubbles were modelled with a popu-
lation balance model by Sarhan et al. (2016), where an Eulerian-Eu-
lerian approach was used to investigate the influence of the con-
centration of solid particles on bubble coalescence in a flotation cell.
The bubble-particle attachment and detachment were included in the
CFD code by writing subroutines in Fortran. It was found that gas
holdup increased with increasing gas velocity as is shown in Fig. 9. The
presence of solid particles reduced the gas holdup and the Sauter mean
diameter of the bubbles in the flotation column. The Sauter mean
diameter of bubbles decreased with the increase of solid concentration
as the particles behave as a physical barrier between the bubbles in-
hibiting coalescence between bubbles. Sarhan et al. (2017a) studied the
effect of bubble-particle aggregate density on the flow dynamics.
Sarhan et al. (2017b) further studied the effect of particle type, density,
wettability and concentration on gas holdup and bubble hydro-
dynamics. It was found that the addition of hydrophobic particles to the
air/water mixture promotes bubble coalescence and, therefore, reduces
the gas holdup, while the addition of hydrophilic particles suppresses
bubble coalescence and increases the gas holdup.
Cai et al. (2016, 2017), used a population balance model in the
study of oil-water separation characteristics in a flotation column. Li-
quid and oil droplet flows were studied using an Eulerian-Eulerian
approach. The preliminary separation zone was shown to be the core
region for efficient collision and coalescence of oil droplets. The effect
of the turbulent kinetic energy on the oil-water separation character-
istics was studied. It was found that the efficiencies of coalescence and
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
Phase details turbulence Objective
model
Liquid phase RNG k-ε To study the effect of vortex generators on
the turbulence kinetic energy and the
turbulence dissipation rate in a pipe flow
unit of a cyclonic-static micro-bubble
flotation column.
Eulerian-Eulerian Realizable k-ɛ To investigate two-phase flow behavior in
gas, liquid flotation columns equipped with vertical
baffle.
Fig. 10. A schematic view of cyclonic-static micro-bubble flotation column
(Yan et al., 2012).
breakage of oil droplets were effectively promoted by increasing tur-
bulence intensity, since the kinetic energy of oil droplets was given by
liquid turbulent kinetic energies.
Multiphase modelling of flotation cells is necessary to understand
the interactions between particles and bubbles. Single phase modelling
is also important to obtain information of liquid flow in flotation cells,
which can be beneficial to optimization of existing flotation cells. Yan
et al. (2012) used a standard k-ε model to simulate single-phase flow in
a cyclonic-static micro-bubble flotation column. A schematic diagram
of the flotation column is shown in Fig. 10. Flow patterns in different
parts such as separation unit and cyclonic unit were analysed to
strengthen the design of each unit. An analysis of the distribution of
velocity and vorticity was used to analyse the separation mechanism. It
was shown that the radial and tangential velocity in the column flota-
tion decreased and the axial velocity became more homogeneously
distributed. It was suggested that the cone in the cyclonic separation
part should be designed to reduce disturbances to the column whilst
strengthening the separation effect of the cyclonic unit.
Instead of using a standard k-ε model, Gong et al. (2015) compared
three different turbulence models, a standard k-ε, a RNG k-ε and a
realizable k-ε turbulence model, in the study of the distributions of
velocity, pathlines, turbulent intensity and turbulent kinetic energy.
The volume-of-fluid multiphase and multiple frames of reference
models were used to simulate hydrodynamics in a cyclonic-static micro-
bubble flotation apparatus. The results showed a consistent decreasing
169
G. Wang et al.
in the intensities of velocity and turbulence from the wall to the centre
of the column and from the bottom of the column to its top. Never-
theless, the distribution of turbulence intensity varied across different
turbulence models. It is noted that bubbles were not considered and
volume of fluid model was used to model the free surface on the top of
the column. Comparatively, Wang et al. (2015) compared three tur-
bulence models, standard k-ε model, RSM-S model and RSM-L model,
and results were compared to PIV measurements of velocity distribu-
tions along the radius and RSM-S turbulence model gave the closest
prediction. RSM-S turbulence model in combination with PIV mea-
surements was then applied to simulate the flow field in the cyclonic-
static micro-bubble flotation column with cone angle at different values
with the purpose of exploring the effect of cone angles on single-phase
flow. Three kinds of vortexes were found, and they were spiralling-up
quasi-free vortex near the wall, spiralling-up quasi-forced vortex near
column axis and spiralling-down quasi-forced vortex between wall and
axis of column. Characteristics of different vortexes distribution were
greatly influenced by the cone angle. Cone angle at 48 degrees was
found optimal to generate the desired relatively static environment in
the column flotation section and proper overflow fluxes and centrifugal
intensity in the cyclonic flotation unit.
Other methods were explored to improve the performance the cy-
clonic-static micro-bubble flotation column. Zhang et al. (2017) studied
the effect of packed fluid guiding media in the column using a single-
phase model. The flow characteristics in the open and packed flotation
columns were compared, and the packed media was shown to stabilize
the liquid flow in the upper part of the column whilst maintaining a
strong cyclonic flow in the cyclone separation part. The improvement in
the flotation recovery in a packed flotation column was connected to
the changed hydrodynamics where particles attached to bubbles effi-
ciently in the strong cyclonic flow and the newly formed bubble-par-
ticle aggregates can quickly report to the froth zone. Wang et al.
(2017b) applied CFD simulations to study the effect of vortex gen-
erators on the turbulence kinetic energy and the turbulence dissipation
rate in a pipe flow unit of a cyclonic-static micro-bubble flotation
column. Optional arrangements of vortex generators arrays were stu-
died to increase the turbulence level, therefore enhancing the prob-
ability of bubble-particle collision and attachment. A lab-scale experi-
ment was carried out to validate the flotation performance of proposed
arrangements. It was shown that the modified structures could improve
flotation performance by enhancing the yield and the combustible re-
covery.
Fig. 11. Simplified sketch defining the three zones (inlet, contact, and se-
paration zone) with advantageous stratified flow in a DAF tank (adapted from
Bondelind et al., 2010a, 2010b).
170
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
4.3. Dissolved air flotation systems
Dissolved air flotation uses microbubbles (30–100 µm) to remove
ions, colloids, emulsified oil and ultrafine particles, etc. Microbubbles
are generated by dissolving air in the water and then releasing the air at
atmospheric pressure. Fig. 11 shows a simplified sketch of a dissolved
air flotation (DAF) tank with the stratified flow. A number of CFD
models are reported on this system that describes the characteristic
stratified flow behaviour (Bondelind et al., 2010a, 2010b; Amato and
Wicks, 2009; Hague et al., 2001; Kostoglou et al., 2007; Ta et al., 2001)
(see Table 4). Lakghomi et al. (2012) studied the importance of flow
stratification and bubble aggregation in the separation zone of a dis-
solved air flotation tank. A CFD model was presented to explore the
effects of operating conditions on bubble removal in the presence of
bubble aggregation. Therefore, desirable stratified flow conditions of
enhanced horizontal flow and bubble aggregate in the separation zone
were suggested for dissolved air flotation system optimization. This
model was then extended to include particles and bubble-particle ag-
gregates allowing bubble-particle attachment to be modelled
(Lakghomi et al., 2015). Water, bubbles and aggregates were modelled
as three different phases using mixture model, and particle concentra-
tion was modelled as a user-defined scalar. The effect of stratified flow,
bubble size, air fraction and particle size on particle removal were
evaluated. The results indicated the presence of stratified flow im-
proved particle removal. Higher air fractions were required at a higher
loading rate to achieve the same particle removal, and an optimum
bubble size was present for maximum particle removal.
Ström et al. (2013) presented a novel hybrid scheme for the simu-
lation of a three-phase flow with aggregate formation in a dissolved air
flotation unit. Three parallel frameworks were employed to predict the
motion of water, aggregates, particles and bubbles. An Eulerian-Eu-
lerian model was applied to describe the flow of aggregates in water.
Particles were treated as passive tracers in the carrier phase as they
were small and close to neutrally buoyant in the dissolved air flotation
system. The behaviour of air bubbles in the water was modelled using
two-way coupled Lagrangian particle tracking. Their model was able to
predict formation and flow of aggregates with simultaneous variations
in size and density throughout the domain.
Chen et al. (2016) studied the influence of bubble size on the flow
behaviour in a DAF tank using both Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-
Lagrangian approach. It was shown that Eulerian-Eulerian model per-
formed better in predicting the air volume fraction in the system. The
model was used to investigate the flow pattern and air distribution in
the separation zone with bubble diameters range from 30 to 50 μm. The
results indicated that bubble size had a significant influence on air
distribution, however it predicted negligible impact on flow patterns
when bubble diameter was greater than 50 μm.
5. Discussions and recommendations for further work
Intuitively, a successful simulation of the flotation process would
depend on the adequate description of discrete phases (particles and
bubbles) while also describing the local flow behaviour around the
interacting bubble-particle pairs. The effect of turbulence on bubble
phase and particle dynamics has been separately studied. Multiphase
hydrodynamics in the flotation process is complicated, but also is
paramount in the numerical study of the mechanisms of flotation.
Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the effect of hydrodynamics on
bubble-particle interactions, which is fundamental to the flotation
process. Nevertheless, hydrodynamics in the pulp phase is entirely
different to that in the froth phase, which is important to determine the
performance of flotation altogether. Existing simulation work has not
combined the froth phase with pulp phase. This section discusses the
effect of multiphase hydrodynamics and a lack of froth phase simula-
tion in the flotation process simulation. Future direction is pointed out
in the multi-scale modelling approach, which is critical to the successful
G. Wang et al. Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177

Table 4
CFD modelling studies on dissolved air flotation.
Refs Geometry Mesh and software Phase details Turbulence Objective
model

Ta et al. (2001) 3D, 30 × 60 × 30 Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To model two phase flow in a DAF
2.15 × 9.75 × 8.3 m (depth × length × width) cells. Air-water tank.
(depth × length × width) Fluent v.4.5 Bubble a uniform size of
50 µm
Hague et al. Not available Fluent v.4.5 Single phase Standard k-ε To simulate flow patterns.
(2001)
Kostoglou et al. Length 7.45 m 29 071 cells Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ω To demonstrate complex interaction
(2007) Height 1.9 m FLUENT 6.2.16 Air-water between hydrodynamics and local
flotation rate.
Amato and Wicks 5.34 × 7.7 × 1.136 m 335,000 hexahedral cells. = Eulerian-Eulerian RNG k-ε To use CFD in design and predictive
(2009) (depth × length × width) Fluent 6.3.26 Air-water analysis.
Bondelind et al. Two (2D)- and three-dimensional Fluent 6.3 Single- and two-phase Realizable k–ɛ To demonstrate using a 2D model is
(2010a, (3D) flow model not sufficient to predict the flow in
2010b) Eulerian-Lagrangian the contact zone.
Bubble a uniform size of To show the effects of the design of
80 μm the flow geometry and the influence
of the bubble size
Lakghomi et al. Two-dimensional ANSYS Fluent 2010 Mixture model Standard k-ε To explore the effects of operating
(2012) Length 1.55 m 76,570 structured rectangular conditions on bubble removal in the
Height 1.24 m elements presence of bubble aggregation.
Ström et al. Two-dimensional In-house code Eulerian-Eulerian Standard k-ε To predict formation and flow of
(2013) height 0.4 m 4100 cells Three phase flow aggregates with simultaneous
width 0.25 m variations in size and density.
Lakghomi et al. Two-dimensional ANSYS Fluent 2012 Mixture model Standard k-ε To evaluate the effect of stratified
(2015) Length 1.55 m 76,570 structured rectangular population balance model flow, bubble size, air fraction and
Height 1.24 m elements for particles particle size on particle removal.
Chen et al. 3D, 705,410 grids. Air-water two-phase flow Realizable k–ɛ To study the influence of bubble size
(2016) Length 1710 mm Uniform bubble model on the flow behaviour of a DAF tank
width 700 mm diameters from 30 μm to
height 1240 mm 70 μm
Euler–Euler
Euler–Lagrange

simulation of flotation process by incorporating hydrodynamic model-
ling of large-scale cells and microscale simulations of interactions be-
tween particles and bubbles.
5.1. Effect of multiphase hydrodynamics
It is noted in the above sections that various studies have been
carried out in the investigations of different flotation equipment.
Though results may vary according to specific setups, the information is
beneficial to the understanding and improvement of existing equip-
ment. The effect of turbulence on the flotation process can be modelled
by incorporating flotation kinetics into the CFD modelling. Turbulence
plays an important role in determining the efficiency of flotation
equipment, which is typically operated in highly turbulent conditions.
Turbulence of high intensity facilitates the attachment of particles by
bringing particles and bubbles together. Contrarily, high-intensity tur-
bulence causes attached particles to detach from bubbles, resulting in
poor flotation recovery. The size of particle is another important
parameter when considering the effect of turbulence on particle-bubble
interactions. The generally accepted reason for declining recovery for
fine particles is different from the reason for declining recovery for
coarse particles (Jameson et al., 2007; Jameson, 2010; Ralston et al.,
1999). Due to small inertia, collision and attachment stages often be-
come limiting factors for fine particles recovery. On the contrary, coarse
particles, after forming bubble-particle aggregates, are vulnerable to
disturbances from adjacent liquid motion, which results in particle
detachment. Therefore, turbulence is favourable for fine particle flo-
tation as particle attachment is a problem for fine particle recovery,
whilst, turbulence is unfavourable for coarse particle flotation as par-
ticle detachment is widespread in coarse particle recovery. In order to
achieve higher recovery, the flotation cells must be operated at op-
timum energy input so that bubble-particle collision and attachment is
maximized, simultaneously minimizing the detachment. Thus, the level
of turbulence inside flotation devices can be optimised to achieve high
flotation recovery. CFD simulations provide detailed information of
flotation rates as a function of energy dissipation rate across flotation
devices. Appropriate modifications can be applied to existing equip-
ment to generate a flow environment that is beneficial to flotation re-
covery.
The importance of turbulence is reflected not only by affecting
bubble-particle interactions, but also affecting particle and bubble
discrete phases in the distribution of bubble size, holdup and particle
concentration. In the early studies, bubbles were considered constant
monosize (Koh et al., 2000; Koh and Schwarz, 2006). Though smaller
bubbles were found to increase flotation rate (Ahmed and Jameson,
1985), bubble size distribution in the simulation of flotation process
was not considered until the advancement of computing capacity and
population balance studies of bubbles in turbulence. The effect of tur-
bulence dissipation rate on the bubble size distribution was simulated
by considering bubble coalescence and breakage (Koh and Schwarz,
2008a,b; Sarhan et al., 2016; Basavarajappa and Miskovic, 2016).
Bubble size was found to have significant effects on gas holdup (Salem-
Said et al., 2012, 2013) and bubble size distribution was found to have
a significant effect on the predicted flotation rate (Koh and Schwarz,
2008a,b). The bubbling zone of a flotation column can operate in either
homogeneous or heterogeneous regime. The homogeneous regime is
characterized by almost uniform bubble size and number density of
bubbles with uniform rise velocity. In the heterogeneous regime, there
exists non-uniformity in the number density of bubbles, particularly in
the radial direction. This results in the gross liquid circulations and
hence increased turbulent intensity. Consequently, the rate of phase
interactions in the heterogeneous regime is quite high as compared to
that in the homogeneous regime. However, the heterogeneous regime
destabilizes the froth as large size bubbles have higher rise velocities
which break through the froth. It adversely affects the height of the
froth and associated mineral recovery. Thus, a flotation column should

171
G. Wang et al.
operate in the homogeneous regime, and this establishes limits to the
maximum gas throughput. In mechanical flotation cells forced-air flo-
tation cells has similar characters as flotation columns in the form of air
input where air is forced into the cell through air sparger or bubble
distributor using a blower. This allows a good control over air injection.
Nevertheless, air inflow in self-aspirated flotation cells is controlled by
the agitation of impellers. The effect of rotational speed of impeller on
the air flow in self-aerated Denver type flotation cell was studied by
Koh and Schwarz (2007). The rate of air flow was determined by the
suction pressure created by the impeller, the hydrostatic head of the
slurry and the frictional losses along the delivery shaft from the inlet
valve to the impeller.
In the case of modelling the recovery of particles, most of the studies
considered particles as an Eulerian phase which means that particles
were not explicitely considered. A notable exception to the Eulerian
models was the work of Liu and Schwarz (2009a,b), where a particle
tracking scheme was introduced to account for the movements of in-
dividual particles. The bubble was considered as a stationary sphere.
Therefore, interactions between particles and the bubble were con-
sidered by tracking trajectories of particles in reference to the spherical
boundary. Recently, Discrete Element Method (DEM) has emerged as a
potential tool to simulate particle motion and has indeed found its place
in flotation research to simulate interactions between particles and
bubbles when bubbles are assumed to be rigid. Maxwell et al. (2012)
applied a three-dimensional DEM in simulating the kinetics of collision
of multiple particles against a stationary bubble and the sliding of the
particles over the bubble surface. The bubble was stationary and fixed
at the centre of the working space, and particles were randomly posi-
tioned within a maximum distance equal to the bubble radius as is
shown in Fig. 12. Forces considered were elastic force following colli-
sion, and hydrophobic attractive force and van der Walls interaction
force. The smaller particles were found to attract more rapidly than the
larger particles, as the applied hydrophobic force model does not con-
sider the influence of particle size. Moreno-Atanasio (2013) compared
the influence of different hydrophobic force models on the capture of
particles by a stationary bubble. These models demonstrate different
dependencies of the hydrophobic force on the distance of a particle
from bubble surface. The capture efficiency of particles by bubble was
greatly dependent on the long-range hydrophobic force. Gao et al.
(2014) used a hydrophobic force model of single exponential decay law
Fig. 12. Schematic of the simulated system indicating the main forces used in the simulations (Maxwell et al., 2012).
172
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
in exploring the influence of the decay length and the strength of the
hydrophobic force on the particle collection efficiency. The results
showed that particle collection efficiency increased with the hydro-
phobic force when decay length was greater than 10 nm. Moreno-
Atanasio et al. (2016) analysed the selective capture of binary particle
mixtures by a bubble influenced by the relative strength of hydrophobic
interactions. It was found that particle separation not only depended on
the hydrophobicity differences of particles but also required one type of
particle weakly interacting with bubbles.
When a particle overlaps with a bubble, the particle is subjected to
surface tension force from the bubble, which stabilizes the attachment
of the particle to the bubble. It is noted that most of the CFD studies so
far carried out considered constant surface tension to calculate surface
forces acting on the attached particles. In a real flotation situation,
surface tension forces are expected to vary as the concentration of
chemical surfactant on the surface of a bubble differs. Wierink and
Heiskanen (2010) modelled the bubble-particle interaction considering
the effect of the dynamic surface tension as the bubble dynamics and
the behaviour of the three-phase interface are determined by the local
surface tension. The surface tension was connected to a randomized
function of turbulent intensity. The modelling approach is a step closer
to a more dynamic modelling of bubble-particle interactions.
The domain simulated covers the volume typical of that associated
with a single bubble. However, such CFD modelling cannot validly be
compared with CFD simulation of full-scale flotation cells containing
billions of bubbles. The LES model at this stage cannot be applied to
full-scale flotation cells. Therefore, RANS model should still be used in
simulation flotation process in cells of large scales. The difference is
essentially the spatial resolution which directly determines the accu-
racy of prediction of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate. It has
been proven by Joshi et al. (2012) that more advanced turbulent
models, likewise LES and DNS, are more accurate in the simulation of
hydrodynamics than RANS models. As the flotation process is closely
connected to energy dissipation rate, shear rate and many other hy-
drodynamical parameters, the accuracy of flotation simulation is, to a
substantial extent, dependent on the turbulent models. Various studies
found that RANS models produced similar bulk flow patterns but local
flow variables varied across different turbulence models.
It should be noted that the effects of turbulence on net flotation rate
is dependent on the combined effects of increasing collision efficiency
G. Wang et al.
and decreasing efficiency. The destruction effects of turbulence on
particle-bubble aggregates have been experimentally confirmed (Wang
et al., 2017a, 2017b). It is generally considered that turbulence in-
creases particle-bubble collision efficiency, though existing studies
were focused on the particle-bubble collision in quiescent liquid
(Hassanzadeh et al., 2018). This widely accept argument is questioning
when the level of turbulence is higher than a threshold value. An in-
crease of turbulence at certain level leads to the enhancement in the
particle-bubble collision efficiencies. Nevertheless, the effects of “pre-
ferential concentration” come into play with further increase in tur-
bulence levels. “Preferential concentration” of bubbles and particles
comes from contrasting effects of turbulence on particles and bubbles.
The asymmetric distribution of the pressure field around the bubble’s
surface pushes it towards the centre of the eddy (Chahine, 1995), whilst
particles with a density higher than that of the fluid phase tends to
migrate to, and concentrate on, the edges of the eddy (Crowe et al.,
1995), This leads to particles and bubbles concentrated in regions of
different vorticities. Therefore, the chances of collisions between par-
ticles and bubbles are less in higher turbulent flow due to “preferential
concentration” effects. It is noticed that scarce study has targeted at this
problem and future efforts should be aiming to solve this problem.
5.2. Simulation of the froth zone
It is noted in the current studies that the froth zone was neglected
and only the pulp zone was simulated. This is a deficiency of the present
models as the pulp is only one part of the flotation process, and it is
physically linked to the froth zone which also plays an important role in
the collection process. Nevertheless, because the hydrodynamics in the
pulp and froth zone are so different, it makes computational sense to
use different techniques for the pulp and the froth, and run two separate
calculations although possibly coupled. Current CFD approaches in
modelling pulp hydrodynamics are quite different from those that have
been used to simulate particle and fluid movement within films and
Plateau borders in the froth zone. Neethling and Cilliers (2003) mod-
elled the movement of liquid within Plateau borders in the framework
for froth zone movement. Brito-Parada et al. (2012) developed a model
for the flow of foams in flotation cells. Flow pattern and velocity of the
foam were obtained for the first time without a symmetry assumption.
A model of froth flow has been used to predict the behaviour of dif-
ferent flotation cells in the study of froth crowders (Cole et al., 2012)
and launder configurations (Brito-Parada and Cilliers, 2012). Bhondayi
et al. (2015) studied the effect of a froth baffle on flotation performance
and found that a froth baffle had a profound effect on both recovery and
grade and a presence of a froth baffle resulted in an increase in grade at
the expense of recovery. The simulation results indicated a change in
particle residence time distribution which helped in explaining ex-
perimental data. It has been identified that the difficulties in simulating
pulp and froth zone concurrently lie in the definition of boundary
conditions. The boundary conditions used in a simulation approach
mainly depend upon the type of hydrodynamics. The flow fields in the
pulp and froth zone are different in a way that the inlet and outlet
boundary conditions should be defined separately for each zone.
Moreover, the pulp-interface is the connecting interface between the
pulp and froth zone which is sharp and well-defined. The transfer of
bubbles and attached particles across the pulp-froth interface should be
considered in the future work.
5.3. Multi-scale modelling approach
A successful simulation of flotation process is dependent on accu-
rately accounting the interacting forces between particles and bubbles.
DEM method, fitted in the multi-scale modelling approach, provides a
suitable framework to incorporate interacting both macroscopic and
microscopic forces between particles and bubbles in a more detailed
way. The advantage of incorporating weak DLVO surface forces such as
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Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
van der Waals force, electrical double layer force and non-DLVO forces
such as hydrophobic force provides an opportunity to capture the sur-
face chemistry aspect of the flotation process. When coupled with CFD,
the so-called CFD-DEM approach can provide both macroscale flow
behaviour of the flotation cell as well as the interacting forces among
the bubbles and particles. A clear advantage of this approach is to have
a more mechanistic interpretation of bubble-particle collision, attach-
ment and detachment models which otherwise are conventionally si-
mulated by the empirical models. Furthermore, the recovery of parti-
cles can be directly accounted by considering interacting forces
between phases without incorporating these empirical models. Existing
CFD studies of flotation rarely considered explicitly interaction forces
between particles and bubbles. Interactions between particles and
bubbles were considered by incorporating flotation kinetic models, i.e.
collision, attachment and detachment models. These models, taking
detachment model as an example, may be derived initially from force
analysis of attaching force and detaching force. Therefore, the accuracy
of CFD simulation of flotation process is largely dependent on flotation
kinetic models. Substantial work has been carried out in studying
bubble-particle collision, attachment and detachment models.
Limitations still exist in flotation kinetic models, as most collision
models do not consider the influence of turbulent flow. Further devel-
opments should aim at developing more accurate kinetic flotation
models.
The accuracy of CFD-based flotation kinetics model in predicting
flotation performance is dependent on the mechanistic interpretation of
bubble-particle collision, attachment and detachment models. Though
many models have been given regarding to particle-bubble interactions,
most of these models remain theoretical and it is difficult to carry out
experiments to validate bubble-particle collision, attachment and de-
tachment models individually as the flotation process is generally stu-
died as a whole. DNS is capable of directly accounting the effect of
hydrodynamics, and therefore researches have started to study the
mechanisms of particle-bubble interactions using DNS. Sasic et al.
(2014) used a DNS method to explicitly study the hydrodynamics where
a solid particle settled in a carrying liquid and interacted with a rising
bubble. The influence of the bubble shape and initial horizontal se-
paration distance between the particle and the bubble on the trajec-
tories of particle and bubble throughout the interaction was studied.
The particle tended to collide and attach to the bubble when the se-
paration distance between their centres was small, and the particle
passed the bubble without interacting when the distance was large. A
bubble with a tendency to deform was found likely to avoid colliding
with a solid particle even at the low initial separation distance.
Legendre et al. (2009) and Huang et al. (2012) study the effect of the
surface contamination on the collision efficiency using DNS to solve the
full particle trajectory equation moving in the flow field generated by a
rising bubble. The probability of collision with a contaminated bubble
was found much smaller than that for a clean bubble.
It is noted that previous DNS simulation of interactions between
particles and bubbles were restricted to quiescent liquid environment.
Lyubimov et al. (2016) studied the interactions between a rising bubble
and a sedimenting fine particle in an oscillating liquid. It was found that
even weak vibrations lead to considerable increase of the effective
cross-section of particle capture by the bubble. Fayed and Ragab (2013)
studied the particles-bubbles collisions kernel in homogeneous isotropic
turbulence using DNS to calculate velocity fluctuations of fluid. Parti-
cles and bubbles were treated as point masses and the effects of the
dispersed phases on the carrier phase were neglected. Bubbles were
shown to migrate to low pressure vortex cores segregating from heavy
particles, which was due to the “preferential concentration” of particles
and bubbles in a turbulent field. This segregation behaviour of particles
and bubbles lead to a reduced radial distribution function and therefore
to reduced collisions frequency between particles and bubbles. How-
ever, existing theoretical models have not accounted for effects of
segregation behavior of particles and bubbles in a turbulent field. DNS
G. Wang et al.
has been also applied to study the attachment of a particle to a bubble.
Lecrivain et al. (2016) used a boundary-resolved model to simulate the
attachment of a particle to the interface of an immersed bubble under
various capillary numbers. The model was shown capable of predicting
the changes in trajectory as the particle approaches the bubble and
reproducing the micro-processes associated with the particle attach-
ment. It is noticed that most of the DNS studies of interactions between
particles and bubbles concentrated either on quiescent liquid or sim-
plified turbulence likewise homogeneous isotropic turbulence. Ac-
knowledging difficulties of carrying out experiments to study separately
particle-bubble interactions, DNS simulations can be trustworthy and
serving as a most accurate tool in the study of particle/bubble-scale
phenomena. DNS studies of flotation are still preliminary in their early
stages. Nevertheless, knowledge gained from detailed simulations of
flotation process could be essential for further understanding and im-
provement of the flotation process.
Detailed information from DNS and DEM simulations of microscale
phenomena of particle-bubble system in a turbulent flow could be in-
corporated into the large scale simulation of CFD. The multi-scale
modelling approach is therefore critical to the successful simulation of
flotation process by incorporating hydrodynamic modelling of large-
scale cells and microscale simulations of interactions between particles
and bubbles. Further details of these bubble/particle scale phenomena
need to be obtained in order to provide quantitative predictions of re-
covery and grade. The approach of combining micro and macro scale
modelling in flotation has been recently proposed by Schwarz et al.
(2016). Most of the previous studies of CFD modelling of multiphase
flow in the flotation process have been carried out for the gas-liquid and
solid-liquid flow. From the literature review, it is however evident that
there have been only a few studies published on the actual gas-solid-
liquid flow encountered in the flotation process. In addition, these
studies solved Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations,
which has been widely used to simulate equipment-scale flows. Direct
simulations of particle/bubble-scale flows are computationally un-
available in the study of equipment-scale flotation process. Never-
theless, mechanisms gained from DNS and DEM simulations of particle-
bubble interactions can be transferred into models which could be in-
corporated in the large-scale simulations using RANS models. In this
way, particle-bubble interactions of micro-scales could be taken into
considerations of macro-scale studies of flotation equipment, whilst
reducing significantly computation costs. By comprehensively re-
viewing existing studies, it is believed to open the possibility for further
numerical modelling work in this area.
6. Conclusions
This study reviewed the computational fluid dynamics modelling
approach for the flotation process, specifically focusing on the state-of-
the-art understanding of the detailed flotation mechanism involving
collision, attachment and detachment in the numerical modelling fra-
mework. A need for such work arises from the fact that numerical
modelling is often considered to be a substitute for expensive experi-
mental trials when it comes to design and scale-up of process equipment
such as flotation cells. Although, in practice, design of flotation cells has
largely been based on the practical experience and empirical design
approach, it is expected that use of physics-based modelling involving
mechanisms of flotation kinetics and multiphase hydrodynamics will
provide better insight into the rigorous design of the equipment, re-
moving the need to design equipment with an extra safety margin,
which can often lead to larger equipment than needed.
The review indicates that since the commencement of numerical
modelling of the flotation cell, in the past two decades significant ad-
vances have been made to simulate the multiphase flow behaviour.
However, it is still far from complete due to multiscale nature of the
problem which requires integration of the complex interplay between
the surface chemistry and system hydrodynamics. A considerable effort
174
Minerals Engineering 127 (2018) 153–177
has been paid towards an understanding of the bubble-particle collision
behaviour which progressed from the simplistic approach of particle
following the streamline predicted from the analytical solution of
Stokes flow around a stationary bubble to realistic flow behaviour in-
corporating phase interactions in both E-E and E-L approaches. The
level of turbulence inside flotation devices needs to be optimized with
optimum energy input to maximize the bubble-particle collision and
attachment and simultaneously minimize the detachment of particles
from bubbles in order to achieve high flotation recovery. Selection of
turbulence model is critical to predict a realistic flow profile and ac-
curate turbulence characteristics. In E-E approach, a significant draw-
back remains in treating the dispersed phases such as bubbles and
particles as interpenetrating continuum which, although providing a
cost-effective solution from the perspective of computational time, does
not capture the true physics of interactions. The E-L approach, on the
other hand, overcomes this limitation by treating the dispersed phase
separately but remains limited in the actual number of dispersed phase
constituents that can be realistically simulated again from the per-
spective of computational resources.
Although the same constraint on realistic particle numbers applies,
the coupled CFD-DEM approach has gained much attention in recent
time due to its capability of modelling forces at microscale which is
critical in modelling the particle attachment and detachment steps and
at the same time predicting macroscale flow behaviour. It is considered
that future progresses in this area can only be achieved through multi-
scale modelling by incorporating CFD simulation of the hydrodynamics
in the macro-scale and DEM simulation of discrete phase in the micro-
scale simultaneously.
Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge that this work was supported by Young
Scholars Program of Shandong University, “YSPSDU”.
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