TRİBOELEKTROSTATİK AYIRICI TASARIM PARAMETRELERİNİN MİNERAL AYIRMADA ETKİLERİNİN İNCELENMESİ
Özet
In this thesis, it is aimed to design triboelectiric separation unit and investigate the
effect of parameters in triboelectric separation performance.
The separation of the particles according to their electrical charges is a very old
separation method used in mineral processing. However, it is not a very common
method because of its high operational cost. In this method, mineral particles have
been charged in an electrical field according to their conductivity and separated by
attracting or repelling between positively or negatively charged electrodes.
Triboelectric is the name of static electric that is occurred by friction of two different
materials. Friction of one particle to each other or to other material, loads the
particles with negative or positive charges depending on its conductivity and surface
properties. The particles, which have different electrical charge (negative or
positive), move different directions in an electrical field. Hence, it is possible to
separate a particle from each other according to their charges. In literature it is
common to charge particles with friction. Investigation of the electric charge required
for the high potential electric field and investigate of the effects of different
parameters on the mineral separation are the main objective and original value of
this thesis. For this purpose triboelectric seperaton unit is desiged and test are
applied with changed varriables to understand separation performance of this unit.
In this unit, the triboelectrical charging of the surfaces of the particles and the
potential static charge required to separate the particles are provided by friction.
Conventional electrostatic separators require external high potential transformers
that convert alternative current to direct current. For this purpose, direct current
transformers with high number of turn are required. Main problems with this
tranformers are high consumption of power, cooling problems during operation and
dangerous work enviroment. In this thesis, it is aimed to build a system that
producing the required electrical potential by friction. Hence, required electrical
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energy consumption will be lower and there will be less operational problems.
Considering to concentional system, innovative part of this system is required
energy is supplied from produced from friction. In addition to these static charge is
not provide high electric current and come in with more safe work environment.
The operational cost of the conventional electrostatic separators is relatively high
because of its high voltage requirements. Rather than electrostatic separators and
other conventional processing equipment, triboelectric separator does not have
high-energy consumption. Major advantage of setup, which is built in Mining
Engineering Department of Hacettepe University, is to produce high voltage up to
35 kV with friction. This is the innovative part of the project. Furthermore this is dry
equipment which reduces the water consumption and it does not need any
chemicals. It is environmentally friendly method.
In this study, artificial test samples are used to investigate the separation
performance of the system. This study provides the required information about
design parameter for this new equipment.
The most important advantage of this system, which was established in the
Department of Mining Engineering at Hacettepe University, is that it produce static
loads up to 35 kV by friction. This method of separation is a dry separation method
and one of the eco-friendly methods used in mining due to the fact that it does not
requre water or any chemical.
The main structure of the unit had been designed by computer program and then it
is built with appropriate materials which are choosen from triboelectric series. The
electricity produced is transferred to electrodes which have different size, shape and
material. The mineral particles had been also charged by mixing in a mixer and then
fed into the electrical field occurred between the electrodes via vibrating feeder.
Tests are performed on synthetic mixtures of liberated magnetite-quartz samples to
prevent any effect of ore in separation performance. After the promising result with
the synthetic samples, tests are performed with industrial mineral, metal ore, coal
and mixture of recyclable material samples. Results of these tests indicated that
