Experimental Equipment

The equipment used in this experiment is the spinning bowl concentrator and the magnetic separator. Spinning Bowl Concentrator The spinning bowl concentrator used in this experiment was the Knelson model KC-MD3 gravity as in figure 1 below.

Figure 1. KC-MD3 Knelson gravity concentrator.

It comprises of a motor, controller and a rotor assembly containing a concentrator cone with ranging speeds up to sixty gs. The concentrator cone contains a series of 5 horizontal rings. These rings increase in diameter form the bottom to the top. The concentrator contains a fluidization jacket which allows the fluidization water in. It enters into the inner bowl through the fluidization holes in counter clock-wise direction. The fluidization water flow rate is monitored by a digital flow rate display. The water wash system in the concentrator feeds the solids to the bowl. A sieve is positioned at the outlet to collect the sample that will be released by the concentrator. Magnetic Separator

Figure 2. Magnetic Separator

The magnetic separator shown in figure 2 is used to separate mixture of dry solids. It is used to separate mixtures of metal and non-metals. In this experiment steel and sand is used. The separator consist a rotating permanent magnetic drum with a belt and a vibrating feed hopper.

The strong side of the magnet is the left side which will be used for separation. There are three bins labeled 1, 2 and 3. When the feed mixture is passed over the magnetic drum the sand will be drop into bin 1 because it is non-metallic and is not attracted long enough on the rotating magnetic drum. While the steel grit or the metal will end up in bin 3.

Methodology
The sample used in this experiment was steel grit and sand instead of iron and sand as mentioned in the manual. The steel grit was pre-sized to obtain a particle size cut. Two sieves were used; a No. 18 sieve was placed on top of a No. 25 sieve. The stack of sieve was shaken and the material remaining on the top of the No. 25 sieve was used as the sample. The sand was pre-sized by using a No. 40 sieve on top of a No. 60 sieve and the sand on top of the No. 60 sieve was used. A mixture of 20g steel grit and 80g sand was used as the sample in order to provide a 20 wt. % sample of steel in sand for the separation run. 5g of steel was put aside for an oxidization test. The water valve is turned on and the fluidization water flow rate is set to 13 L/min until all the remains in the concentrator is removed. This is to ensure the holes in the concentrator cone are not clogged. Then it was reduced to 5 L/min. The rotor speed was set to 30% of the rotor speed controller dial which is around 500rpm and the tachometer was used to fine tune the speed to 500rpm. A 200 mesh screen was placed under the exit. The spinning bowl concentrator was run and remaining sand from the concentrator was obtained on the mesh. A few things were mistakenly done. The stop watch was started as soon as we started adding the sample into the concentrator. We didnt wait for all the sample was completely added before adding the stop watch. The fluidization rate was not set to 7 L/min. There were five intervals when the samples were collected at 30th second, 60th second, 120th second, 180th second and 260th second. At every interval the used 200 mesh screen as replaced with a new one. After that, then the fluidization flow rate was increased to 7L/min to flush out the remaining sand from the cone. At the end this left us with a light launder sample and another separate heavies sample in the cone. The samples werent combined as stated in the original lab manual. They were separately placed in the oven for drying. The steel grit oxidation test sample was thoroughly wet in a filter paper using a water squirt bottle. The water from the samples and the filter papers were rinsed using acetone in the fume hood. They were then placed in a large sieve and placed in an oven set at 100C for drying. They were left in the oven for a few days. It was not necessary to use the magnetic separator in this case because the samples were not a mix of sand and steel grit. Every sample was either sand or steel grit. The samples were weighed and their weights were recorded.