Modelling and Internal Model Control of a Flotation Cell

Froth flotation is a very important unit operation in mineral processing circuits. One of the important control parameters in a flotation cell is the liquid height, which shows an unstable open loop response. The objective of the present work is to develop a mathematical model for the flotation cell for the purpose of deriving an Internal Model Control (IMC) system for the system. The model was developed by using the component balances for the valuable mineral, waste gangue material and water. The resulting dynamic model was solved using the SIMULINK toolbox in MALTLAB. Using the simulated results an IMC controller was designed and tuned. The IMC controller gives a stable response with a small overshoot of 0.038, small decay ratio of 0.05 and settling time of 6 hours.