Predictive Assessment of Quality of Mineral Aggregates Disintegration

Abstract

The paper is supposed to discuss one of the most important technological properties of mineral aggregates: their ability to disintegrate, to be destroyed for the subsequent redistribution and extraction of a useful component. The strength of a mineral aggregate is determined by the strength of accretion of composing individuals and depends on many factors, including the energy (kinetics) of formation conditions and the subsequent transformation conditions. The energy of the boundary of accretion of mineral grains in aggregate cannot be directly measured since currently, there are no reliable and proved methods for measuring the surface energy of solids. It is only possible to calculate quantity, proportional to the surface energy of the fusion of mineral grains – this is the calculation of the atomic density of the surface, parallel to the boundary of accretion of a pair of mineral grains. The methodology and calculation of this characteristic have been developed and published. The use and obtaining of results are possible at the stage of preliminary mineralogical study by methods of geometrical analysis of the structure of the mineral aggregate. The effectiveness of the proposed method is determined by the knowledge of the quality and features of destruction of the aggregates using different physical methods of disintegration: traditional mechanical, ultrasonic, electro-pulse, electro-hydraulic.