화학공학소재연구정보센터
Minerals Engineering, Vol.133, 10-18, 2019
TowerMill circuit performance in the magnetite grinding circuit - The multi-component approach
The performance of the TowerMill circuit at the Karara mine concentrator was evaluated after the changes in the concentrator's operational conditions and modifications in the grinding circuit. The concentrator throughput was increased by 21%. Karara mine had shifted the grinding workload from the primary ball mill circuit to TowerMill circuit by bypassing the scalping Derrick screen in between these two circuits to cope with the increase in the throughput. These actions had led to a coarser TowerMill circuit feed and higher mass flow rate that resulted in a coarser circuit product. The TowerMill circuit audit had revealed that the feed to the TowerMill circuit was coarser with wider distribution and the multicomponent analysis of the hydrocyclone streams had exhibited the coarse, low-density gangue minerals had bypassed to the hydrocyclone overflow stream. The analysis also had demonstrated that magnetite had a finer cut size compared to the gangue minerals, i.e. 32 and 58 mu m respectively. Karara mine had implemented bottom feed configuration and use of 17 mm to enhance the grinding efficiency with the new operational conditions. Moreover, the hydrocyclone was operated at a higher pressure to minimise the coarse, low-density gangue minerals to bypass through the overflow stream. The multicomponent analysis had created opportunities to understand the insights of particle breakage and classification in the TowerMill and hydrocyclone. This paper focuses on the TowerMill circuit audit outcome, multicomponent analysis, implementation of recommendations to improve the grinding efficiencies and quantification of the improvement.