Can ceramic balls and steel balls be combined in an industrial tumbling mill?

Self Cite

Ceramic ball milling has demonstrated remarkable energy-saving efficiency in industrial applications. However, there is a pressing need to enhance the grinding efficiency for coarse particles. This paper introduces a novel method of combining media primarily using ceramic balls supplemented with an appropriate proportion of steel balls. Three grinding media approaches, including the utilization of steel balls, ceramic balls, and a hybrid combination, were investigated. Through an analysis of the grinding kinetics and the R–R particle size characteristic formulas, the study compares the breakage rate and particle size distribution changes for the three setups. The results indicate that employing binary media effectively improves the grinding efficiency for +0.3 mm coarse particles while maintaining the energy-saving advantages of ceramic ball milling. Simultaneously, the uniformity of the ground product is ensured. This proposed approach has been successfully validated in industrial applications, providing robust theoretical support for the expansion of ceramic ball milling applications.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing the Grinding Efficiency of a Magnetite Second-Stage Mill through Ceramic Ball Optimization: From Laboratory to Industrial Applications

Wu,

Chen,

Liao

et al. 2024

Self Cite

“…The energy utilization efficiency of ball mills is a very important indicator, which reflects the percentage of useful energy. The amount of energy required to produce a qualified particle size (%−75 µm) per unit mass is called specific size energy (SSE), which is calculated according to the newly generated particles, energy consumption, and throughput [24,25], as shown in the following equations:…”

Section: Specific Size Energymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Intensive Abrasion Breakage on Secondary Ball Mills for Magnetite

Yuan

et al. 2023

Self Cite

In order to investigate the breakage behavior of the feed in industrial secondary ball mills, the breakage characteristics of fine magnetite were analyzed. Magnetite particle breakage produces a bimodal particle size distribution that is consistent with the typical breakage characteristics of abrasion. The secondary ball mill can increase the surface area by reducing the diameter of steel balls to enhance the abrasion. Industrial application results show that after the abrasion of the secondary ball mill for grinding magnetite was enhanced, the circulating load of the grinding-classification system dropped by 29.90% and the specific energy of the secondary ball mill decreased by 39.14%. At the same time, the consumption of steel balls also dropped from 0.17 kg/t to 0.13 kg/t, a decrease of up to 20%. It should be noted that the reduction in the ball diameter should follow certain rules because if the energy of a single collision is lower than the critical breaking energy of the particles, the grinding process will be affected and thus have counterproductive effects.

“…The crystal structure of a ceramic ball mainly consists of a large number of Si-O tetrahedra and Al-O tetrahedra, which makes the surface hardness of the ceramic ball higher. The ceramic balls grinding process has been successfully applied in a well-known magnetite processing plant in China, resulting in over 30% energy savings and substantial cost reductions [4][5][6]. Grinding kinetic behavior as an important characterization tool for the grinding process, it can be used to obtain differences in breakage rate, generation rate and particle size characteristics under different grinding modes, and can predict the particle size distribution of the ground product relatively accurately.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ceramic Grinding Kinetics of Fine Magnetite Ores in the Batch Ball Mill

Yuan,

Wu,

Ling

et al. 2023

Self Cite

Aiming to reveal the kinetic characteristics of ceramic ball grinding of fine magnetite comprehensively, two types of ceramic balls ground with the same filling rate and total weight as steel balls were researched. The results show that the breakage rate of ceramic ball grinding is only half of that of steel ball grinding with the same media filling rate. With the same total media weight and a feed size less than 0.212 mm, the breakage rate of the ceramic ball grinding approaches the steel ball grinding and is 17.14% higher than that of the steel ball grinding. The main crushing form of magnetite changed from impact to abrasion in ceramic ball grinding compared with steel ball grinding, which significantly affected the value of the zero-order output constant a. The shift indirectly led to a very different character of the variation ing the parameter β, related to the fines generation rate in the cumulative distribution function of the ceramic ball grinding compared to the steel ball grinding. Therefore, ceramic grinding with a high ball-filling rate can greatly save on energy consumption under the premise of meeting normal production.