Crushing characteristics of different minerals by cylindrical ball mill in cascading motion state

Abstract

During the grinding process of the impact and abrasion actions synchronously coexist and continuously occur, the two actions may exert forces in different areas and transform to each other periodically. So it is difficult to characterize the respective crushing characteristics of the impact and abrasion actions. Based on the kinematics theory of grinding media, to ensure the grinding medium to be in cascading motion state in which minerals are crushed by only abrasion action of medium, to investigate the crushing characteristics of three kinds of minerals of quartz, pyrrhotite, and pyrite. Moreover, the difference in the ability to resist the crushing in the grinding process and the influence of feed sizes on the crushing were investigated by analyzing and comparing the breakage rate of the different minerals and the yield of specific product size - t10 value under different test conditions. The research results indicated that the grinding resistance of quartz is the strongest, followed by pyrite and pyrrhotite. Besides, a smaller feed size resulted in a more grinding and crushing effect on the minerals. Therefore, during production, the grinding system should be adjusted according to the change in the material property to prevent over-grinding.