Wet comminution in stirred media mills

Abstract

The importance of stirred media mills in various industries as well as in research is steadily increasing because the quality requirements of comminution products, e.g. the product fineness, rise continuously. This paper gives a survey of different mill designs and of the influence of various operating parameters on the specific energy consumption. The specific energy necessary for a certain product fineness depends above all on the stress intensity, which is among other things a function of the grinding media size and the circumferential stirrer speed. At similar stress intensities, the influence of the stirrer and grinding chamber geometry is small and scale-up using the specific energy is usually possible. Moreover residence time behaviour, wear of grinding media and autogenous comminution are discussed.