Mass Balances in Mineral Process Engineering
Mass Balances in Mineral Process Engineering: A Practitioner’s Handbook is a practical guide to building, solving and defending mass balances across mineral-processing plants. Written for engineers, metallurgists, consultants and graduates, it moves beyond isolated textbook equations to show how complete plant balances are developed from real streams, measurements and operating constraints.
Using a consistent gold-processing case study, the book follows material through crushing, milling, cyclone classification, gravity recovery, thickening, leaching, carbon-in-pulp adsorption, elution and electrowinning. Readers learn how to define system boundaries, convert slurry measurements, count degrees of freedom, formulate node equations, manage recycle streams and construct plant-wide solids, water and component balances.
Particular attention is given to the practical problems that determine whether a balance can be trusted: measurement uncertainty, biased sampling, redundancy, observability, weighted least-squares reconciliation, gross-error detection and uncertainty propagation. The book explains not only how to make numbers close, but how to distinguish a defensible balance from one that has merely been forced to close.
Topics include:
- Solids, water and slurry calculations
- Two- and three-product formulae
- Size-by-size and multi-component balances
- Circulating loads and recycle convergence
- Crushing, grinding, thickening, flotation, leach and CIP balances
- Plant surveys and sampling plans
- Dynamic balances, surge and residence time
- Spreadsheet and simulator applications
- Complete plant-wide reconciliation
A companion Excel workbook supports the calculations with transparent, traceable formulas, visible checks and no hidden logic.
Whether preparing a feasibility-study stream table, investigating a plant discrepancy or reviewing somebody else’s balance, this handbook provides a structured method for producing results that can be explained, audited and trusted.