A two-tier approach to the mass balance of multi-level mineral processing data. Part 2: splicing of stream flows and global balance over a circuit

Abstract

In the second stage of a new 2-tier approach to mass balancing, an algorithm is employed for splicing together the hierarchy of material flows within the streams that connect the nodes of a circuit in a manner that ensures reconciled and consistent data with minimum deviations from measured values and performance indices. The smoothened data are extracted by minimization of an error function in which the weighting factors for data points and performance indices can be adjusted to alter the distribution of errors in order to emphasize different flows selectively. Qualitative criteria for reliability of the smoothened data are proposed. For demonstration of the 2-tier method, two sets of flotation plant data are mass balanced. The results indicate that this technique could be a versatile and reliable solution to the problem of reconciling and analyzing plant scale mineral processing data.