Despite the recognized significance of ground product fineness on both line capacity and downstream process performance (typically flotation), less than 10% of mineral ore concentrators today use particle size measurements in automatic control applications for the final product particle size.

Although “near-line” particle size measurement instrumentation has been in place for several decades and is commonly installed in most modern concentrators, its availability and low measurement frequency have typically been inadequate for reliable use in automatic control. Their low availability is often due to problems with slurry sampling and transport systems required to deliver samples to the measurement instrument.

Recently an innovative technology for real-time particle size measurement has been developed by CiDRA Minerals Processing, under its commercial name CYCLONEtrac™ PST, already proven in several commercial installations, demonstrating near 100% availability with minimal maintenance, thus overcoming the limitations of previous technologies.