Effect of phosphate quality on foam generation during the phosphoric acid production process

The presence of organics materials in phosphate ores generates foam during the manufacture of phosphoric acid, thus affecting the production performance and the quality of the products. Today, in the phosphate industry defoamers are used to reduce the negative impact of foam phosphoric production. In the present work, we focused on root cause evaluation for foam generation during the phosphoric acid production process, we evaluated the effect of phosphate rock quality in terms of organic carbon (OC) and carbonate content, on foam generation using a laboratory protocol for foaming ability evaluation. The results show that there is a relationship between the volume of the foam generated and the values of those impurities, while the volume of foam generated is higher when the concentration of OC and Carbonate is high. In our work, we confirm that the foaming ability of the phosphate rock can be avoided if the concentration of organic carbon less than 0.1% and less than 3% for carbonate.