Modelling of particle flow behaviour in spirals

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The mineral sector is a significant contributor to wealth generation in Canada, accounting for up to 4 % of GDP. The iron ore section of the industry processes a large quantity of material, running at thousands of tonnes per hour at many plants. There is, however, a large loss of iron-bearing minerals to the tailings, up to 30 % of the iron in the feed. The main method of separating the iron-bearing minerals from the gangue (waste) minerals in northern Quebec is to use spiral concentrators, which are a helical form of gravity separator. Heavy material remains towards the centre, whilst lighter (less dense) material moves outwards in the spiral trough. However, despite their simplistic design (appearing similar to a water slide or a helter-skelter at a fun park), the flow patterns and separation mechanisms are not well understood. This leads to a significant loss of valuable mineral, especially in the small size range (less than 100 micrometres in diameter). This project will investigate methods of improving both our understanding of the spiral concentrators, and development of new designs. This will be through computational modelling and particle tracking. The positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) will be utilised to observe the motion of individual particles in the spiral, thereby giving validation to the computational models developed.