Measurements of bubble size distributions are very important in flotation which is widely used in different chemical industries such as the recovery of valuable minerals, wastewater treatment, deinking of waste paper, and oil recovery from tar sands. Although numerous authors determined bubble size distributions (BSD-s) in gas–liquid systems, BSD-s have been rarely determined in gas–liquid–solid systems. Moreover, the influence of BSD-s on flotation has not been quantified under a wide range of experimental conditions. Thus, this paper is focused on measurements of bubble size distributions by changing surfactant dosage, solid percentage, air velocity and particle size as well as establishing the relationships between bubble size distribution properties and flotation performances. It was found that the experimental bubble size distributions are successfully fitted by using the log-normal distribution model in which the two model parameters (μ and σ) are used. The results showed that the most important factors affecting the Sauter mean diameter (d₃₂), the model parameters and the flotation recoveries are the surfactant dosage and the solid percentage. The increase in the surfactant dosage decreased d₃₂ probably due to the decrease in liquid surface tension. The increase in solid percentage resulted in an increase in d₃₂ perhaps due to the increase in the pulp viscosity at high solid percentage. The lower the d₃₂, the lower the flotation recovery. The results show that d₃₂ and the model parameters represent the true BSD-s. However, a thorough understanding of bubble size distributions is needed to better understand flotation performances.

气泡大小分布的测量在浮选中非常重要，浮选已广泛用于不同的化学工业中，例如有价值的矿物的回收，废水处理，废纸脱墨以及从焦油砂中回收油。尽管许多作者确定了气液系统中的气泡大小分布（BSD-s），但很少在气液固系统中确定BSD-s。而且，BSD-s对浮选的影响尚未在广泛的实验条件下量化。因此，本文着重于通过改变表面活性剂的用量，固体百分比，空气速度和粒径以及建立气泡尺寸分布特性与浮选性能之间的关系来测量气泡尺寸分布。使用σ）。结果表明，影响Sauter平均直径（d ₃₂），模型参数和浮选回收率的最重要因素是表面活性剂的用量和固体含量。表面活性剂剂量的增加使d ₃₂减少，可能是由于液体表面张力的降低。固体百分比的增加可能导致d ₃₂的增加，这可能是由于高固体百分比时纸浆粘度的增加。越低d ₃₂，较低的浮选回收率。结果表明，d ₃₂模型参数代表真实的BSD-s。但是，需要对气泡大小分布有透彻的了解，才能更好地了解浮选性能。