Geosystem Engineering

ISSN: 1226-9328 (Print) 2166-3394 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tges20

Estimation of selectivity index and separation

efficiency of copper flotation process using ANN
model

Omid Salmani Nuri, Ebrahim Allahkarami, Mehdi Irannajad & Aliakbar

Abdollahzadeh

To cite this article: Omid Salmani Nuri, Ebrahim Allahkarami, Mehdi Irannajad
& Aliakbar Abdollahzadeh (2016): Estimation of selectivity index and separation
efficiency of copper flotation process using ANN model, Geosystem Engineering, DOI:
10.1080/12269328.2016.1220334

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/12269328.2016.1220334

Published online: 18 Aug 2016.

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Geosystem Engineering, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/12269328.2016.1220334

Estimation of selectivity index and separation efficiency of copper flotation

process using ANN model
Omid Salmani Nuria, Ebrahim Allahkaramia, Mehdi Irannajada and Aliakbar Abdollahzadeha,b
a
Department of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; bKashan University, Kashan, Iran

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Artificial neural network was used to predict the copper ore flotation indices of Separation Efficiency Received 10 May 2016
(SE) and Selectivity Index (SI) within different operational conditions. The aim was to predict SECu Accepted 1 August 2016
and SIFe and SIMo as a function of chemical reagent dosages (collector, frother, modifier), feed rate, KEYWORDS
solid percentage, and the feed grade of Cu, Fe, and Mo. A three-layered back propagation neural Artificial neural network;
network with the structure of 9-10-10-3 is selected and standard Bayesian regularization was used flotation; separation
as a training function in which, it is unnecessary the validation data-set being apart from the training efficiency; selectivity index;
data-set. The advantage of this algorithm is the minimization of weights and linear combinations copper ore
of squared errors of producing the appropriate network. In the training and testing stages, the
quite satisfactory correlation coefficient of 1 for three training outputs and .93, .9, and .88 for
testing outputs was achieved. The results show that the proposed approach models can be used
to determine the most advantageous industrial conditions for the expected SE and SI in the froth
flotation process.

Highlights
Modeling and efficiency evaluation of process using
SE & SI instead of process recovery and grade.
Prediction of SECu, SIFe and SIMo as a function of
input variables of flotation process.
Application of ANN with validation and training
data sets as a unique ones.
A quite satisfactory correlation coefficient between
inputs and outputs variables in training and testing
stages was achieved.
1.Introduction
The froth flotation is a separation method that is used
for selective separation of hydrophobic minerals from
hydrophilic ones. It is one of the most important meth-
ods to beneficiation of sulfide ores. The progress of froth
flotation amended the recovery of desire minerals such as
copper and lead bearing minerals (Jameson, 1992). The
sulfide copper ore commonly contained molybdenum as
a byproduct in which can be selectively separated by the
flotation process. The porphyry copper ores contain chal-
cocite and chalcopyrite as sulfide minerals and malachite
and azurite as oxide minerals. The most important associ-
ated gangue minerals include iron-bearing minerals such
as pyrite and silicate minerals such as quartz, muscovite,
carbonate, and albite (Bulatovic, 2007). The Sarcheshmeh
copper mine is the one of the largest in the world which
has been processing the copper and molybdenum since
1982 (Banisi, Hamidi, & Fazeli, 2003). In the last decades,
many scholars have reported application of the Artificial
neural network (ANN) method as the attractive method
in mineral processing plants to control and modeling of
process such as, grinding stage control, flotation process,
image analysis, hydrometallurgical processing, coal wash-
ery process, and so on (Jorjani, Chelgani, & Mesroghli,
2008; Mohanty, 2009; Ryad, Daniel, & Noureddine, 2003).
Kalyani et al. have established to simulate the froth flo-
tation process for the beneficiation of coal fines. In this
work, the network weights have been estimated and used
to compute the parameters of the coal flotation process
(Kalyani, Pallavika, & Chaudhuri, 2008). Jorjani and et al.
predicted the combustible value and combustible recovery
of coal flotation concentrate by the regression and ANN
methods based on proximate and group macerals anal-
ysis (Jorjani, Poorali, & Sam, 2009). In another study by
Al-Thyabat, the feed-forward artificial neural network was

CONTACT Mehdi Irannajad iranajad@aut.ac.ir

2016 The Korean Society of Mineral and Energy Resources Engineers (KSMER)
2 O. Salmani nuri et al.
used to study the effect of feed mean size, collector dosage,
and impeller speed on flotation recovery and grade. The
results showed that grade was more sensitive to changes
in flotation parameters than recovery (Al-Thyabat, 2008).
The neural network modeling on the transition of heavy
metals from NiCd zinc plant residue were carried out
by Kamran Haghighi and et al. Also, in a different work,
the synergistic effect of LIX 984 N and D2EHPA on
separation of iron from zinc solution was investigated.
The results showed that there is an excellent agreement
between the experimental data and the predicted values
(Haghighi, Moradkhani, & Salarirad, 2014; Haghighi,
Rafie, & Moradkhani, 2015). Singh and Rao studied the
image processing and RBFNN techniques for ore sorting
and ore classification (Singh & Rao, 2005). Nowadays, the
high-grade resources are becoming rare and acquiring the
pure product with the least amount of impurity would be
difficult. It is important to have a view about that if the
grade of feed from the point of view valuable and gangue
minerals changed, what will change the quality of product.
These days, the flotation process of copper ores is well
known. For example, Azizi evaluated the effect of various
factors such as pH, solid percentage, collector type and
dosage, and kinetic selectivity index of copper from iron.
He found that the best flotation kinetics of copper attained
at pH 11.5, solid percentage=28% and collector concen-
tration=40gr/ton (Azizi, 2015). Another work has been
carried out on the copper flotation by Azizi. He investi-
gated the influence of collector dosage and pulp chemistry
(i.e., water type, solid percentage, pulp pH) on grade and
Figure 1.The simplified Sarcheshme copper mine flotation circuit (Banisi et al., 2003).
recovery of copper flotation (Azizi, 2014). Hassanzadeh
used from reagents (collector and frother) to improve
copper grade and recovery of coarse size fractions and
preventing them to tailing fraction (Hassanzadeh, 2016).
The aim of the current paper is to assess the modeling of
flotation process via ANN method based on Separation
Efficiency (SE) and Selectivity Index (SI) of copper from
molybdenum and iron. This paper is managed as follows:
The next section describes the industrial plant briefly.
Introducing The ANN modeling and the results of mod-
eling for SE and SI in an industrial flotation process using
ANN discussed in Section 2. Finally, Section 3 presents
the conclusion.
1.1. Flotation process description
The simple flowsheet of Sarcheshmeh copper flotation
circuit is shown in Figure 1. In this process, the copper
ore (75m) used as the feed of rougher bank. In there,
copper flotation carried out in pH (11.512.5) using the
chemical reagents such as Z11 (sodium isopropyl xan-
thate) as a collector and MIBC and Dowfroth 250 as a
Frother and fuel oil as a modifier. The flotation section
included the rougher, cleaner, and scavenger cells with a
regrind mill. A re-grind mill is used to grind the coarse
particles (i.e., Underflow of the secondary cyclone) of the
combined rougher and scavenging concentrates. A final
product with an average grade of 2830% Cu (chalcopyrite
and chalcocite), .7.8% Mo and 2728% Fe is obtained
after flotation stages.

The total recovery is fluctuating between 83 and 87%,
depending on operating parameters and ore types. From
the previous experience, some factors that can be more
effective and have been the important role in the flotation
of copper ore were selected as the ANN input variables.
Then, the SECu (Wills & Napier-Munn, 2005) and Gaudins
SIMo and SIFe (Gaudin, 1957) calculated and are given by
the Equations of (1) and (2): (Gaudin, 1957; Wills &
Napier-Munn, 2005
SE = Rm Rg (1)
Ra J b
SI = ( ) ( ) (2)
100 Ra 100 Jb
where Rm % recovery of the valuable mineral (Cu), Rg %
recovery of the gangue (MoFe) into the concentrate; Ra
is the recovery of Cu in the flotation concentrate, and Jb
is the recovery of gangues (MoFe) in the tailing fraction.
Gaudin proposed the selectivity index as the conven-
ient measure of two-way separation. Selectivity index
denotes the recovery and rejection of two components
with each other. It can be used for better presentation of
selectivity separation of valuable mineral from the gangue
mineral in the concentrate. In operational condition, the
selectivity index is between 4 and 40 (Gaudin, 1957). By
definition, the selectivity index can be used for presenting
the quality and quantity of separation between valuable
minerals and gangue ones. The selectivity index including
two parameters of the recovery of valuable mineral and
gangue mineral in which the recovery of valuable mineral
and gangue mineral is considered in the concentrate and
tailing, respectively. So, this parameter selected as crite-
rion for evaluation of the flotation process.
1.2. ANN modeling
The ANN is the computational model that contains the
numeral units with interpolations called neurons. These
neurons indicated some features of ANN biological con-
struction (Haghighi et al., 2014). In comparison with
the conventional method, a conventional algorithm will
employ complex sets of equations, and will apply to only
a given problem and exactly to it.
The ANN will be (a) computationally and algorithmi-
cally very simple and (b) it will have a self-organizing fea-
ture to allow it to hold for a wide range of problems. ANNs
are based on the terms called neurons that their duties
are the estimation of complex nonlinear associates exist-
ing between ANN input and output variables to an arbi-
trary degree of accuracy (Hornik, Stinchcombe, & White,
1989; Poggio & Girosi, 1990). Meanwhile, the ANN is an
important tool for interpolation between experimental
Geosystem Engineering 3
data. The ANN has been used for the complex systems
that cant be modeled by using mathematical methods.
In this approach, the best solution for any given problem
is attained by trial and error. The neurons in ANN have
two important parts, summing and weight parameters
(Turan, Mesci, & Ozgonenel, 2011). In this study, the MLP
structure has been used to ANN modeling. To obtain the
appropriate structure for ANN, the following stages were
carried out:
(a)Selecting and preprocessing of data.
(b)Dividing the samples to two sets: training and
testing sets.
(c)A selection of model geometry.
In this approach, the industrial data from the
Sarcheshme flotation plant used as a series of input and
outputs matrix to learn the network, during the run of
each training epoch, the network calculated the error to
compare the experimental outputs and predicted values
(Bayar, Demir, & Engin, 2009). Based on these stages and
with respect to the aforementioned, developed code in
MATLAB software was used for training and testing of
the neural network model. Training the network carried
out with the standard Bayesian regularization back prop-
agation algorithm. On the other hand, in this training
method, optimize the weights and biases performed by
LevenbergMarquardt. The Bayesian training algorithm
is one of the best approaches to improving generalization
performance of the network for function approximation
problems (Karimi, Rafiee, Taheri-Garavand, & Karimi,
2012). It is unnecessary that the validation data-set will be
apart from the training data-set. This is noticeable for the
small size of the data-set. The advantage of this algorithm
is the minimization of weights and linear combinations of
squared errors of producing the appropriate network and
well generalization (Anderson, 1995; Karimi et al., 2012).
1.3. Data preprocessing
In this study, the pre-processing stage was used, which
can result in the neural network training more efficient.
Pre-processing of the network training set was done by
normalizing the inputs and targets using the Equation (3):
Xi X
Xn = (3)
Std
where, Xn and Xi are normalized and actual values, respec-
tively. X and Std are the mean value and standard devia-
tion of each subset (inputsoutputs). The normalized data
have the mean and Variation of 0 and 1, respectively.
So, nine inputs and three outputs, network models
were developed in which, pulp pH, dosage of chemi-
cal reagents (collector, frother, and fuel oil), feed rate,
4 O. Salmani nuri et al.

Table 1.The statistic summary of variables in different operating conditions.

Variables Maximum Minimum Mean value Standard deviation
Collector dosage (gr/ton) 25.06 10.5 18.5813 2.9573
Frother dosage (gr/ton) 22.5 12 16.3130 2.0084
Fuel oil dosage (gr/ton) 5.94 2 3.3258 .6492
pH 12.39 12.09 12.3034 .0559
Solid percent (%) 29.08 25.11 27.4425 .8253
Feed rate (thousand tons /day) 53.225 31.002 44.2796 3.2834
Cu grade (%) .82 .55 .6674 .0540
Fe grade (%) 6.58 3.71 4.8260 .6401
Mo grade (%) .04 .02 .027 .0036

Table 2.Correlation coefficients between predicted values and outputs.

Variables Col Fr Fo pH SP F Cu-g Fe-g Mo-g SI-Mo SI-Fe SE-Cu
Inputs Collector (Col) 1
Frother (Fr) .231 1
Fuel oil (Fo) .24 .337 1
pH .098 .394 .092 1
Solid percent (SP) .072 .178 .405 .012 1
Feed rate (F) .221 .233 .178 .23 .053 1
Cu-grade (Cu-g) .154 .091 .004 .203 .012 .188 1
Fe- grade (Fe-g) .098 .394 .026 .225 .055 .24 .337 1
Mo-grade (Mo-g) .054 .002 .062 .098 .394 .002 .08 .043 1
Outputs SI-Mo .232 .19 .047 .143 .001 .008 .19 .122 .046 1
SI-Fe .047 .072 .083 .495 .209 .052 .046 .015 .072 .243 1
SE-Cu .143 .083 .116 .015 .072 .083 .122 .046 .047 .232 .943 1

solid percent, and the feed grade of Cu, Fe, and Mo as
the input variables. On the other hand, to evaluate the
process, SECu and Gaudins SIMo and SIFe are selected
as an output variable in the flotation concentrate. The
maximum, minimum, mean, and standard deviations
of input variables in different operating conditions are
given in Table 1. These data divided into input and tar-
get matrix. (74) (80% of whole data) and (18) (20% of
whole data) data are reserved as the training and testing
subsets, respectively.
In order to investigate the strength of the linear rela-
tionships between the input and output variables, a cor-
relation matrix was produced by the bivariate correlation
method. For this goal, the correlation analysis, Pearsons
correlation coefficients, have been investigated between
SECu, SIMo, SIFe, and the other selected parameters. These
coefficients (R-values) are given in Table 2.
2. Result and discussion
2.1. Structure of appropriate ANN network
Selection of appropriate structure of a network is obtained
by changing the number of neurons, hidden layer and
the kind of transfer and training functions. While the
number of layer and neurons in each layer are selected in
good mode, the effect of transfer and training function
would be negligible and avoidable (Benardos & Vosniakos,
2007; De, Kaiadi, Fast, & Assadi, 2007; Hao & Ling, 2008;
Youhong, Lingen, Fengrui, & Chih, 2007). A three-layered
back propagation neural network (BPNN) formed as the
structure of this study. As can be seen, Figure 2 shows
the aforementioned structure. Ninety-two industrial data-
sets, collected during the one year were applied to develop
the ANN structure.
As mentioned above, the network based on three lay-
ers is selected to estimate the outputs. Linear (purelin)
and Tangent sigmoid (tansig) functions were applied
to output layer and transfer inputs at the hidden layer,
respectively. The optimum number of neurons was
selected via trial and error procedure is suggested by
Anderson and McNeill (1992). At the beginning, the
network was performed with two neurons in each layer
and increased the number of neurons every other layer
up to 10 in which, the least mean square value (MSE)
and root mean squared error (SSE) attained. On the
other hand, in each run, if the results of compared
between targets (inputs to networks) and outputs
(answers of network) were wrong, the ANN emen-
date the network interpolations (weights and biases)
(Karimi et al., 2012; Schalkoff, 1997). Finally, the best
structure and geometry of the network were attained
9-10-10-3 arrangements, capable simultaneously pre-
dicting the SECu, SIMo, and SIFe in the flotation process.
2.2. Evaluation of ANN prediction
There are several ways of measuring error. In this paper,
the ANN model was evaluated by MSE that is depicted
in the Equation (4):
 Geosystem Engineering 5

Figure 2.Architecture of NN model.

Figure 3.Curve of MSE to training subset.

m
1 expected value of the squared error loss or quadratic loss.
MSE = (Y T)2 (4)
m i=1 i
where, m is the number of observations, Yi is the predicted
value of ith pattern by ANN; T is the actual values. In this
best condition, the outputs were in good agreement with
targets in which, the mean square error performance func-
tion (MSE) of the training data-sets was attained 1.4289e-
11 at 187 Epochs. The MSE value is shown in Figure 3. To
evaluate the ANN model error and simulated data, the R
square value was used. The error was calculated via MSE
or RMSE which are a risk function, corresponding to the
2.3. Network accuracy of SE prediction
In order to evaluate the ability of model estimation of
training and testing data for the metallurgical perfor-
mance (i.e., SE and SI of copper flotation process in
companying of Fe and Mo minerals), the following lay-
out includes (i) fitting, (ii) regression, (iii) error and (iv)
histogram diagrams were attained from the model. These
plots show that the predicted values are in good agreement
6 O. Salmani nuri et al.

with targets and the prediction error value is shown in
Figure 4(ad). As can be seen in Figure 4(a), the SE val-
ues, calculated from Equation (1) are exactly fitted on the
predicted ones from the network. This means, the ANN
can be quite accurately predict the actual values of the out-
put (i.e., SECu) in the copper flotation process. Figure 4(b)
shows the R-square value for the testing sets which was
highest as possible (R2=1), indicates that the performance
of selected network (9-10-10-3) is the best. Figure 4(c)
shows that the error range is between +1.5e-5 and 1.5e-5
that demonstrates the ANN model accuracy. The MSE and
RMSE values for this output are obtained 2.0679e-11 and
4.5474e-06, respectively. Figure 4(d) indicates the error
histogram of outputs that can investigate the inconsistent
errors. The large center peak indicates very small errors
or outputs that are very close to the target values. The
smaller endpoint spikes denote clearly incorrect results
(Twomey & Smith, 1995). As seen from Figure 4(d), the
high frequencies of error histogram concentrated on the
zero error, meanwhile, it can be concluded that the pre-
dicted values are in good agreement with target values.
In continue to investigate the accuracy of the present
model on the SECu, the testing data that were not used
in the training stage were applied to the testing stage in

Figure 4.Results of training data for modeling of SE: (a) Comparison of measured SE (Cu) in the flotation concentrates with predicted
values, (b) correlation between calculated and observed values, (c) prediction error values and (d) relative frequency histograms of data-
set output errors by NN for Cu.

Figure 5.Results of testing data for modeling of SE: (a) Comparison of measured SE (Cu) in the flotation concentrates with predicted
values, (b) correlation between calculated and observed values.
 Geosystem Engineering 7

ANN model. The result of testing data from Figure 5(ab)
indicated the satisfactory fitting of predicted values of SECu
with measured values of them, the correlation coefficient
value of testing data was obtained 93%. If the correlation
coefficient is closer to the 1 value, ANN efficiency for pre-
dicting output values will be satisfactory. In this study,
the results of R-square values are obtained 1 and .93 for
training and testing stages, respectively. So, it can be con-
cluded that the SECu is well-predictable parameter as the
output of the ANN and flotation process. Whereas, the SE
is simultaneously in relation to the recovery and grade of
valuable mineral (i.e., copper content), the ANN model is
very suitable for evaluation of the flotation process.
2.4. Network accuracy of SIMo and SIFe predict
At same work, the model estimation of Gaudins selectiv-
ity index for copper concentrate is appraised by Equation

Figure 6.(a) Comparison of measured SI (Cu-Fe) in the flotation concentrate with predicted values, (b) correlation between calculated
and observed values, (c) prediction error values and (d) relative frequency histograms of data-set output errors by NN for Fe.

Figure 7.(a) Comparison of measured SI (Cu-Mo) in the flotation concentrate with predicted values, (b) correlation between calculated
and observed values, (c) prediction error values and (d) relative frequency histograms of data-set output errors by NN for Mo.
8 O. Salmani nuri et al.
Figure 8.Results of testing data: (a) Comparison of measured SI (Cu-Fe) in the flotation concentrate with predicted values, (b) correlation
between calculated and observed values.
Figure 9.Results of testing data: (a) Comparison of measured SI (Cu-Mo) in the flotation concentrate with predicted values, (b) correlation
between calculated and observed values.
(2), in which the Cu is the valuable mineral and Mo is the
gangue mineral. These results are indicated in Figures 6
and 7(ad). As can be seen from Figures 6 and 7(a), the
predicted values from the two models are entirely fitted on
the real values. Figures 5 and 6(b) indicate the correlation
between the model response and targets that R-square
value is the 1, illustrating the good agreement between
the predicted and target values. Figures 6 and 7(c) illus-
trates the error variation interval and error histogram
for SIFe and SIMo prediction, the error range is between
+1e-5 and 1e-5 for SIFe and +6e-5 and 6e-5 for SIMo,
that is the negligible interval and indicates that the model
of ANN has a very accurate representation of the indus-
trial results. The MSE and RMSE values for SIFe and SIMo
are obtained (1.6233e-11 and 4.029e-06) and (5.954e-12
and 2.4401e-06), respectively. Figures 6 and 7(d) indicate
the error histogram of outputs that can investigate the
inconsistent errors, indicates that there is a good fit between
the outputs of the model and results of experiments.
As previously aforementioned, the result of testing data
for both outputs (i.e., SIFe and SIMo) are depicted in Figures
8(ab) and 9(ab). As can be seen from these figures, fitting
of SIFe in comparison with SIMo was better. Also, the obtained
R-square values of testing data for SIFe and SIMo were 90 and
88%, respectively. With respect to the R-square values, MSE
and RMSE values, the ANN model outperform for SIFe than
SIMo. This means that the ANN model is capable to accurately
predict the SIFe than SIMo. Whereas, the SI is simultaneously
in relation to the recoveries of valuable and gangue minerals
(i.e., copper content with iron and molybdenum). The ANN
model is very suitable for evaluation of the quality of separa-
tion in copper flotation process.
3.Conclusion
A four-layer BPNN was developed and optimized to predict
of SECu and Gaudins SIMo and SIFe in the flotation concentrate
as a function of pH, chemical reagents (collector, frother,
and modifier dosage gr/ton), feed rate (thousand tons), and
the feed grade of Cu, Fe, and Mo. The geometry of a net-
work, giving the minimized MSE and SSE was a four-layer
network having 10 neurons with tangent sigmoid transfer
 Geosystem Engineering 9

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Cu Copper of an artificial neural network model for the steam process
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F Feed rate (thousand tons /day) Haghighi, H. K., Moradkhani, D., & Salarirad, M. M. (2014).
Cu-g Cu grade (%) Modeling of synergetic effect of LIX 984N and D2EHPA on
Fe-g Fe grade (%) separation of iron and zinc using artificial neural network.
Transactions of the Indian Institute of Metals, 67, 331341.
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doi:10.1007/s12666-013-0354-7
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SIMo Selectivity index of Cu-Mo on transition of heavy metals from NiCd zinc plant residue
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