Mixing intensification for the mineral industry

The modern mineral industry uses hydrometallurgical processes to extract metals from ores. Typically, a large volume of ore slurry is treated in mixing tanks in a mineral processing plant, for leaching, digestion, precipitation, and other chemical processing to obtain pure metals or concentrated ores. This paper discusses mixing intensification as a means to achieve process intensification for the mineral process industry. Areas where mixing intensification can be applied are illustrated with case examples. Among them, it was suggested that for slowly reacting slurry systems typical in the mineral processing operations, high solid loadings should be considered to boost throughput. Improved agitator energy efficiency can be achieved by removing baffles, at very high solid loadings. Slurry stratification in tanks can be used to boost either solids residence time or slurry through flow.