Recover what the circuit leaves behind.
Fine particles are slipping through your flotation circuit — and taking your margins with them. In published flotation research, ultrafine bubbles recover fines that standard bubbles miss and cut collector and frother demand by up to 50%. We build the hardware that puts them in your circuit.
(Ore- and Circuit-Specific · Published Research)
(Lab Scale, Narrow Fine Chalcopyrite Cuts — Not a Plant Feed · Published Research)
(Phosphate Trials, k 1.01 → 1.89 min⁻¹ · Published Research)
Valuable minerals are leaving in your tailings
Fine and ultrafine particles are invisible to standard flotation bubbles. They slip through your circuit and end up in tailings — taking your revenue with them. Every ton of unrecovered mineral is revenue that does not come back.
Bubbles small enough to find the fines
Ultrafine bubbles attach directly to fine mineral surfaces, creating aggregates that standard bubbles can lift. In published flotation research that raises recovery on fine size cuts, lowers collector and frother demand, and speeds kinetics. Kairospace has no mining installations of its own — we build the hardware that puts those bubbles in your circuit, and the first step is a test on your ore.
Key benefits
Get more from every ton
Capture ultrafine valuable minerals that were previously going straight to tailings. Published trials report recovery up 16–21% — measured at laboratory scale on narrow fine and ultrafine chalcopyrite size cuts, not on a full plant feed.
Cut reagent demand by up to half
Ultrafine bubbles act as a secondary collector. In published flotation research that reduced collector and frother demand by up to 50% while grade held or improved. It is a reduction, not a replacement for the reagent program, and it is ore- and circuit-specific — not a dosage another operation can adopt.
Faster throughput, lower energy
In published phosphate flotation work the rate constant nearly doubled (1.01 to 1.89 min⁻¹), completing 25–50% faster — shorter residence times, smaller tanks, and more capacity from the circuit you already have.
Oxygen is a reactant in the leach, and most barren solutions run short of it
Gold dissolves by the Elsner equation — 4 Au + 8 CN⁻ + O₂ + 2 H₂O — so oxygen is consumed alongside cyanide, and in published research the leach runs best near a cyanide-to-oxygen ratio of about 6:1 by mass. Most barren solutions carry far less dissolved oxygen than that ratio asks for, which is why the same ore leaches slower and less completely on the pad than it did in the bottle roll.
The response to dissolved oxygen is saturating, not proportional: past the point where oxygen stops limiting, more of it buys nothing. Our calculator is built on that curve. It caps any recovery gain at the kinetically limited share of your current loss, and if your circuit already sits at the cyanide-to-oxygen optimum it returns zero and says oxygen is not your limit. The flotation results above are a separate unit operation and are not modelled by it.
How much revenue is hiding in your tailings?
Tell us your ore type, particle size distribution, and current recovery rates. We'll come back within 48 hours with what the published work implies for a circuit like yours, and what a test on your ore would need to settle.
Get a scoped proposalWhat buyers in mining ask before an ore test
Is this for flotation or for heap leaching?
Both, but they are two different unit operations, and the evidence for one does not carry to the other. In flotation, ultrafine bubbles attach to fine particles; in published flotation research that cut collector and frother demand by up to 50%, ore- and circuit-specific. In heap leaching, oxygen is an Elsner reactant, and the heap-leach calculator models a saturating response — if your circuit already sits at the cyanide-to-oxygen optimum, it returns no gain and says oxygen is not your limit.
Can we test on our ore first?
Yes, and that is where we start. Kairospace has no mining installations and no measurement of its own in this application — every figure on this page is published research, on other people's ores. That record is ore-specific, not uniformly positive: on a high-clay copper ore, nanobubbles intensified slime coatings and reduced recovery, which is why clay chemistry gets tested before anything is sized.
How does it tie into our circuit?
The injector mounts inline on existing piping, so the tie-in is a pipe connection rather than a new cell. Where it goes in your circuit follows from what the ore test shows, and the proposal specifies it along with the power circuit and the mounting area for the skid. Installation itself usually takes one to three days.
What does an ore test measure?
Treated against untreated on the same ore: recovery by size fraction — the fines are where the published gains sit — alongside collector and frother dosage and flotation kinetics. For a heap, the first question is whether oxygen is limiting at all, which your cyanide-to-oxygen ratio answers. Send your ore type, particle size distribution and current recovery rates; we come back within 48 hours with what the published work implies for a circuit like yours and what a test would need to settle.
What the research says, and what we build
Each problem below is paired with the published work on it and with the hardware that puts the mechanism in your line. Figures are other people's trials unless marked KST field data.
Figures below are from independent, peer-reviewed studies unless marked KST field data.