Iranian Journal of Materials Science and Engineering

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Multivariable regression and artificial neural network procedures were used to modeling of the input power and gas holdup of flotation. The stepwise nonlinear equations have shown greater accuracy than linear ones where they can predict input power, and gas holdup with the correlation coefficients of 0.79 thereby 0.51 in the linear, and R2=0.88 versus 0.52 in the non linear, respectively. For increasing accuracy of predictions, Feed-forward artificial neural network (FANN) was applied. FANNs with 2-2-5-5, and 2-2-3-2-2 arrangements, were capable to estimating of the input power and gas holdup, respectively. They were achieved quite satisfactory correlations of 0.96 in testing stage for input power prediction, and 0.64 for gas holdup prediction