Would you sacrifice 1–2% recovery to make a flotation circuit much more stable?

This is probably one of the harder decisions in plant operation.

A flowsheet can be tuned aggressively for maximum recovery, but the operating window may become very narrow.

A slightly higher collector dosage, deeper froth, higher air rate or longer residence time may improve recovery under one ore condition and then become a problem when the feed changes.

For a plant dealing with variable ore, I'd rather have a circuit that consistently operates close to its economic optimum than one that occasionally reaches a higher laboratory recovery and spends the rest of the time being adjusted.

This is also something that comes up in our flotation design and commissioning work: metallurgical performance and operability have to be optimized together.

I'm curious where other operators draw the line.

Would you accept slightly lower peak recovery if it gave you a much wider and more predictable operating window?