Semi-autogenous grinding mill pebbles as a vertically stirred mill medium

ABSTRACT

Semi-autogenous grinding pebbles were used as a grinding medium and compared to steel balls in terms of their effect the flotation behavior of the products and their industrial application. The pebbles increased the rate of copper recovery from the concentrated products by 3.30% to 86.89%. Industrial application showed that using pebbles instead of steel balls reduced over-comminution by 8.05% and increased the recovery rate by 1.81% when the copper grade of the concentrate was equal. Hence, pebbles are a viable and beneficial alternative to steel balls as the grinding medium in vertical mills.

KEYWORDS:

• Semi-autogenous grinding mill pebbles
• steel balls
• iron pollution
• flotation surface characteristics
• over-comminution

Acknowledgements

The authors also thank the Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Mining Engineering and Jiangxi Copper Group Yinshan Mining Co.Ltd., China for their support.

Author Contributions

C.W. and A.L. conceived of and designed the experiments; A.L. and L.J. prepared the samples and performed the experiments; C.W. and A.L. analyzed the data; C.W., A.L., L.J., C.Y., Q.Y., and T.S. contributed to the writing and revising of the paper.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [51764015]; and the Jiangxi Provincial Key Research and Development Program of China [S2017YBYFE0475].