Development of Coal Mechanical Preparation in Light of Platform Independent Modeling: Two Solutions

Abstract

This contribution describes methodologies for modeling of coal preparation systems. We extend the Reuter and van Deventer steady state method, which optimizes both network design and valuable mineral grade for a network of froth flotation cells in two passes using LP techniques, we have proposed a way that the empirical model for the flotation process can be extended to model heavy media, and water-only cyclones and other types of sieves and classifiers. The initial configuration has been simplified to include one of each of the four types of processing units, initially with only one species of input feed. We have expanded our initial LP model to include multiple elements present in multiple species. The LP model could be used to suggest an alternative circuit configuration based on changed operating conditions, making use in a global control loop possible. We subsequently compared the LP model with a System Dynamics (SD) model, generated from the same coal wash plant platform independent model. We attempt to simulate the same constructs with both approaches but find that extension of the constructs available to the SD platform dependent model may be required to make the two approaches converge.