Ball mill simulation in wet grinding using a tumbling mill and its
correlation to grinding rate (Hiroto Mori, Hiroshi Mio, Junya Kano, Fumio
Saito*)
Ball mills have been widely applied in different fields such as the mining,
chemical and pharmaceutical industries. One of the most popular ball mills is
a tumbling ball mill which consists of a rotating cylindrical drum (with lids)
with grinding media such as balls. The grinding performance is related to the
ball motion in a drum (pot) during milling and is dependent on operational
conditions such as rotational speed, ball filling, mill size and sample charge.
Especially in wet milling, solid concentration and viscosity of a slurry in a pot
are significant parameters for determining optimum condition [1,2]. The
optimisation of the grinding conditions has normally been determined from
the experimental effort and empirical technique [3 – 8]. However, it would be
still difficult to determine the optimisation in the wet milling operations when
the milling conditions such as mill size, ball and sample charges, solid
concentration in slurry and mill scale are changed. To get through this
situation, it would be important to grasp the information on the media
motion in a mill under the presence of slurry. However, insufficient
information has been reported yet. One of the most promising ways would be
a method based on the discrete element method (DEM) for simulating the
motion of balls in slurry during milling [9]. In dry milling, a number of
investigations on the modelling of ball milling by using DEM have been made
[10 – 13]. We have also reported the method for simulating the motion of
balls in the presence of powder in a mill pot and ended up to the correlation
of the grinding rate of material with the specific impact energy of balls using
different types of mills [14 –18]. However, little information on the simulation
of the motion of balls in wet milling has been reported. This may be due to
difficulty in the expression of the model in the DEM for the slurry during
milling
BREAKING DOWN ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN INDUSTRIAL GRINDING
MILLS
(*Jocelyn Bouchard1 , Gilles LeBlanc2 , Michelle Levesque3 , Peter
Radziszewski4 , and David Georges-Filteau1)
Although it is commonly known that industrial grinding circuits loose – or
generate – significant amounts of heat, little information is known about the
actual energy balance. Radziszewski (2013) estimated using a
thermodynamic analysis that 43% of the energy input in a typical mill is
transferred to the slurry, raising the temperature of the discharge product. It
is only recently that a more precise picture started emerging with a pilot
project for developing a methodology to map energy flows (Bouchard et al.,
2016). Following the idea of recovering energy currently being wasted
(Radziszewski, 2013; Radziszewski and Hewitt, 2015), the objective was to
propose a tool for characterising the complete potential.
Discrete element simulations with LIGGGHTS(Carles Bosch Padros)
The present work is focused on reproducing different approaches to simple
yet characteristic problems involving granular materials hitting a surface and
emphasizing computational aspects directly affected by the nature of the
problem, showing that, although the DEM is a well-established method, there
are some aspects that can be studied and could modify and simplify the
simulations. It is well known that issues like the coefficient of restitution,
coefficient of friction or cohesion have a direct influence in the impact
behaviour, nevertheless, this thesis pursues the understanding of how these
basic parameters perform in basic situations.
Effect of ball and feed particle size distribution on the milling
efficiency of a ball mill: An attainable region approach (N. Hlabangana
a , G. Danha b, * , E. Muzenda)
The size reduction unit operation is known to be the most inefficient and
energy consuming operation in any beneficiation process. With the
emergency of stringent environmental protection and industrial waste
disposal policies in most countries, any research effort that has the potential
to bring about a reduction in energy consumption and operational costs while
maximizing the grinding efficiency is most welcome. Mineral processing
plants consist of quite a complex array of processing units connected
together through a flowsheet. Traditionally each of the unit operations has
been optimized separately and unfortunately it has been realized that a set
of optimized units does not necessarily lead to an optimum system. In this
investigation an integrated approach was taken in order to optimize the
process across an entire circuit rather than individual units. This implies that
an operator should not apply a rigid specification for the output from one unit
for entry to the next unit but rather the output from a unit must be such that
it gives result to an optimum system. In this article the effect of grinding
media size distribution and feed material particle size distribution (PSD) on
the product fineness requirements were investigated. A model free approach
called the Attainable Region method was then applied in order to optimize
the product size fineness in terms of the feed size and ball mix. The practical
applications of this research are a reduction in the inefficiencies associated
with either flotation or leaching processes as an optimized product size
would be reporting to these unit processes. Theory states that for the
leaching process, a better recovery is obtained coupled with a reduction in
reagent consumption and costs if an optimized feed size is employed. To
achieve this objective it is necessary to understand the interaction between
the feed particle size and the grinding media size match. These play a major
role as gradation of media is influenced mostly by particle size and product
fineness requirements. A relatively simple scenario will be used here in order
to demonstrate how to optimize a ball match for a product that will be fed to
a leaching plant.