Energy Efficient Liberation and Comminution (2B1)
Project Status: Complete. Further work carried out under the 2B1 Extension project.
Project Participants: BHP Billiton, CSIRO, Curtin University of Technology, Newmont, Rio Tinto, University of Queensland, Xstrata, Anglo Platinum, Rustenberg Platinum Mines
Project Leader: Malcolm Powell (University of Queensland)
Comminution is almost always the most energy intensive process at a mine site. At a typical mine site, up to 40 percent of electrical energy usage may be associated with comminution. The energy utilised in manufacture of mill liners and grinding media is also substantial. Hence, significant reductions on either of these areas will have economic and energy benefits.
The aim of this project was to identify and test (by simulation) ways to reduce total comminution energy at exisiting mine sites by 20 percent or more, through one or more of the following routes:
- Improving the use of existing equipment.
- Using more eco-efficient equipment (e.g. HPGR).
- Processing less material by liberation and rejection of gangue.
- Developing a Virtual Comminution Machine
to predict the performance of new equipment, and incorporate subtle design changes.
Research outputs from this foundation project include:
- The completion of three major literature reviews, on existing eco-efficient comminution devices, the design of eco-efficient comminution circuits, and sensing technologies fore ore sorting.
- Field work to collect samples from mine sites identified as having promise for eco-efficient comminution and liberation - with follow up laboratory grinding characterisation tests on the samples.
- Completion of a PhD thesis investigating (at laboratory scale) the energy efficiency of comminution circuits employing HPGR technology (part of the AMIRA P9 project).
- Experimental work in the laboratory on the effect of media properties on the grinding efficiency of stirred mills.
- Study of ball and liner wear by impact, abrasion and corrosion, to assist in the development and validation of steel media and liner wear modesl (part of the AMIRA P9 proejct).
- Experimental work on site to compare the performance of an IsaMill and a ball mill in coarse grinding duty in terms of energy efficiency and size reduction.
- Development of a fair meausre of eco-efficiency, which can be used to compare eco-efficiency between different types of equipment.
- Development of a new device (by JKMRC) for characterising the breakage properties of rocks, which offers substantial improvements to the traditional tests.
- An experimental investigation of the incremental impact breakage of a well-characterised ore sample.
- A new model for the incremental breakage of rocks on successive impacts of known specific energy (part of the AMIRA P9 project).
- Completion of a PhD thesis investigating the scale-up and modelling of industrial vibrating screens.
- Application of DEM to modelling a banana (mulit-slope) screen.
- Further development of the framework for a Unified Comminution Model that will lead to the development of a Virtual Comminution Machine.
- Prediction of the slurry transport through a SAG mill using combined DEM/SPH simulator.
- A DEM study comparing the dynamics and consequent energy efficiency and wear characteristics of tower and pin mills.
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