Sensitivity of oil shale particle surface to the applied load in ball mill

ABSTRACT

The size reduction is a mandatory step in oil shale processing. In this study, the sensitivity of oil shale and its organic matters to the applied load in grinding was tested in a ball mill not only by using the different number of grinding media balls as an effective load but also by using balls made of two materials, namely, steel and ceramic. The ground product was characterized in terms of its mean size (d₅₀) as well as it was subjected to flotation tests, and the properties of the floating product in terms of the loss-on-ignition and recovery percentages were determined. Furthermore, the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) was used to show how the grinding media load can affect the surface properties of the ground product and correlate that to the flotation results. The results indicated that a delicate grinding load is needed for this sample of oil shale. The higher the load, the lower the loss-on-ignition (LOI) of the ground product and the lower the d₅₀ of the ground product, and its higher recovery in flotation proposes that the produced fines are rich in gangue minerals of inorganic nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Oil shale
• organic matter
• grinding load
• ball mill

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank the Minerals Technology and Testing Lab, Mining, Petroleum and Metallurgical Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University for providing the help, guidance, and the needed equipment and instrumentation for conducting the experiments of this work.

Competing Interests

The authors confirm that there are no competing interests to report.