Researcher: Dr. Ted Nuorivaara, D.Sc. (Tech), Postdoctoral researcher, Geological Survey of Finland, Circular Economy Solutions

Supervisors: Professor Simon Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland, Circular Economy Solutions

Assistant Professor Rodrigo Serna, Aalto University, Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Mineral Processing and Recycling

Description of the project:

CellFroth is collective name for a group of cellulose based drop-in solutions that are utilized in the world’s most common mineral enrichment process called froth flotation. This novel technology was recently discovered and developed in Aalto University and is currently being further studied in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). CellFroth is a unique chemical formulation produced from sustainable sources that improves the performance of froth flotation mineral concentrators. Were these advantages maintained at industrial scale, CellFroth would allow to significantly increase of mineral throughput while also improving mineral recovery only by changing flotation chemistry, something that is not achieved to such extent with current commercial flotation reagents.

The CellFroth Pro project has one major goal, which is to thrive towards developing an optimal CellFroth formulation and to facilitate its utilization on an industrial scale operation. Considering that scaling up such a flotation technology is not trivial; the goal can be distributed into two consecutive and concurrent research campaigns:

1)To continue developing CellFroth and to optimize its formulation. The aim of the optimization is to understand a) which components are ideal in terms of performance and cost; b) the impact on performance based on different formulation properties; c) the effect these different formulations have on the use of other flotation chemicals, e.g., the capability of reducing collector concentration.

2)To test the improved CellFroth formulation in a continuous miniplant setting with industrially relevant materials. The aim of this campaign is to demonstrate the performance of the new CellFroth formulation in an industrially relevant, continuously operated flotation environment, thus representing a significant advancement towards industrial flotation operations.