CMM researchers participated in international mining industry congress in South Africa

Fernando Betancourt and Raimund Bürger presented the main advances achieved in the context of the Group Project that they are leading.

The 11th International Flotation Conference (Flotation ’23) was held in Cape Town, South Africa, between Sunday November 5th and Thursday November 9th. The event was organized by Minerals Engineering International and was sponsored by around 30 mining industry companies from different countries.   

This congress was held at the Vineyard Conference Centre of the Vineyard Hotel in the South African city and some of the industrial challenges addressed by the representatives of the scientific community who participated were: Fundamental reagents and flotation chemistry; Bubbles, froth, bubble-particle interactions; Hydrodynamics, kinetics and scaling of flotation cells; Development of flotation machines; and Metallic, non-metallic and coal flotation; among others.   

Two researchers from the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the Universidad de Chile participated in the event. They are Dr. Fernando Betancourt and Dr. Raimund Bürger, who are also director and alternate director of the Anillo Project ‘New models of flotation in the mining industry: simulation, experimental validation, and prediction tools for treatment of complex ores under water scarcity’ (ACT210030 of ANID), respectively, and academics from the U. de Concepción, where they also integrate the Mathematical Engineering Research Center (CI²MA) of the U. de Concepción, UdeC. They were joined by UdeC academics Dr. Leopoldo Gutiérrez and Dr. Andrés Ramírez, both from the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and researchers from the Center for Water Resources for Agriculture and Mining.  

“This conference”, Dr. Betancourt explained, “is the most important one in the specific area of mineral flotation, where researchers, representatives of mining companies and suppliers of machinery and services from more than 30 countries gather. This allows us to make visible the work we have done in the area, as well as to strengthen and create new scientific collaboration networks”.  

The group of researchers presented posters entitled ‘Use of dispersants for the flotation of gold minerals from a porphyry copper deposit’ and ‘An experimental validation of a 1D model for column flotation’, and, in addition, in the third technical session of the congress, last Tuesday, Dr. Bürger presented the talk ‘A degenerating convection-diffusion model of a flotation column: theory, numerics and applications’ which was co-authored by Drs. Fernando Betancourt, Stefan Diehl (Lund University, Sweden) Maria del Carmen Martí (U. de Valencia, Spain), and Yolanda Vásquez (Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá).  

In his talk, the speaker summarized the advances of the mathematical modeling of the group, and particularly the doctoral thesis of Dr. Yolanda Vásquez, related to the modeling of flotation columns including the drainage mechanism. “It was a very particular experience, since I was the only mathematician among the more than 300 participants of the event”, Dr. Bürger commented.   

Regarding the main results of the participation of the team of scientists from the Group Project, Dr. Bürger emphasized that “I had several interesting conversations with experts interested in our modeling, but above all I learned about the results of research groups and problems posed by applications that we could address by mathematical modeling, and we certainly made new contacts that we wish to take advantage of for the future, especially regarding the validation of mathematical modeling by experimental data”.

Participation in the Flotation ’23 conference was funded by ANID through the ACT210030 Ring project led by Betancourt. In this context, Dr. Lina Uribe, researcher of this project and academic of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Talca, also participated in the event.

By Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM journalist.

Posted on Nov 16, 2023 in News