Performance optimization of primary hydrocyclone of Esfordi phosphate plant through simulation and genetic algorithms

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 University of Kashan

2 University of Tehran

Abstract

Hydrocyclone is one of the most important equipments for efficient separation of fine particles in mineral processing industry. Due to high usage of hydrocyclones in closed grinding circuits, optimization of these devices will directly affect the whole operation efficiency. Finding the optimum steady-state values of hydrocyclone's operating parameters in order to achieve the design targets, requires application of simulation and numerical optimization methods. In this paper, optimization of the primary hydrocyclone in ball milling circuit of Esfordi phosphate plant was done by BMCS simulator in Matlab environment. Simulation of hydrocyclone in this software is based on Plitt's model which was used by GA Toolbox in Matlab software for solving the optimization problem. To search for optimum operating condition, first the target function was defined according to desired particle size distribution of underflow stream. Then, repeated simulations of hydrocyclone operation were done by BMCS under Matlab with automatic changing of input variables by GA Toolbox. The search results are considered to be the optimum values of the variables. The described method is a powerful tool to determine the optimum steady-state design for new or existing plants.

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References

[1] Farzanegan; A., 1998, Knowledge-Based optimization of mineral grinding circuits, Ph.D Thesis, McGill University,Canada.
[2] Farzanegan, A. and Vahidipour, S. M., 2009, Optimization of comminution circuits simulations based on genetic algorithms search method, Minerals Engineering, Vol. 22, Issues 7-8, pp. 719-726
 [3] Plitt, L.R., 1976. A mathematical model of the hydrocyclone classifier. CIM Bulletin 69 (776), 114-123.
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[7] سید مصطفی کیا؛ الگوریتم­های ژنتیک در Matlab، انتشارات کیان رایانه سبز، تهران، ویرایش اول 1388.
Journal of Analytical and Numerical Methods in Mining Engineering
Volume 1, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
February 2012
Pages 40-44

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History

  • Receive Date: 27 November 2015
  • Accept Date: 27 November 2015

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