Tailings Dewatering and Methods for Flocculant Selection

摘要

Techniques for selecting a polymer flocculant for use in dewatering tailings can include dispersing polymer flocculant samples into corresponding fine tailings samples under first shear conditions, conditioning each of the dispersed flocculation matrix samples under second shear conditions with lower shear rate to form conditioned samples, determining a corresponding water-release response of each of the conditioned samples; and selecting a polymer flocculant corresponding to sufficient water-release response. The techniques can also include identifying chemical activity of a polymer flocculant sample, and then determining water-release response of the potential candidate flocculant retained after determining chemical activity.