Electric motors monitoring: An alternative to increase the efficiency of ball mills

Abstract

Ball mills can be frequently found in ore grinding facilities. These machines show high energy consumption together with a low efficiency. As a consequence, even a small improvement on the performance of the grinding process can have a huge impact in the operating costs of the plant and in the optimization of energy resources. One of the reasons for this low efficiency rate is the difficulty of identifying the filing level, and as a consequence, the difficulty of operating the mill at the optimum filing condition. Through an extensive bibliographic review, this work attempts to reveal the interesting possibilities that motor monitoring techniques can have in improving the efficiency of ball mills.