Minerals Engineering, Vol. 3, No. I/2, pp. 3-5, 1990 0892-6875/90 $3.00 + 0.

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Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press plc

COMMINUTION IN THE MINERALS INDUSTRY - AN OVERVIEW

B.A. WILLS

Camborne School of Mines, Redruth, Cornwall, England

ABSTRACT

Comminution is the most important unit operation in the beneficiation o f ores,

its major role being to promote liberation of the valuable from the gangue
minerals. This duty is, however, generally performed relatively poorly and at
considerable expense, comminution often accounting for around half of the total
operating costs in base metal concentrators.

Comminution equipment has changed little fundamentally during the last f i f t y

years, although methods of control and optimisation have improved
considerably.

Innovative comminution technology has been developed in recent years, but has
been slow to be adopted by the relatively conservative mining industry. However,
with the need to process increasingly refractory ores efficiently and at low cost,
the adoption o f novel methods will become ever more important.

CONVENTIONAL COMMINUTION

Comminution of mineral ores is conventionally performed by crushing, followed by

grinding. Crushing is usually performed in several stages to reduce the particle size to such
a level that grinding can be carried out to achieve adequate liberation. Jaw, gyratory and
cone crushers dominate crushing operations, and the design of these machines has changed
little over the last few decades, although there have been many advances in their control.

There is an overlapping size area where it is possible to crush or grind the ore, and recent
innovative crushing technology has made the division between crushing and grinding less
distinct. For example, the Barmac Rotopactor crusher's primary advantage is that the
product has a remarkably uniform cubical shape throughout the wide product size range.
The product also contains a disproportionate amount of fines, which means that the crusher
has potential as a substitute for a conventional crusher-rod mill circuit [1].

Grinding, the most important operation in the process of liberating valuable minerals from
gangue, has changed little fundamentally in the past 50 years, being still carried out in
tumbling mills. It is well known that these are extremely inefficient in their utilization of
energy, but despite their limitations, conventional mills have been used for so long because
they are relatively simple devices; they are continuous, high-throughput machines that can
be fairly easily controlled to produce the required product particle size distribution.

A recent trend has been the increasing use of extremely large grinding mills, the largest ball
mills in current use being 6.5m in diameter. Apart from reducing capital and operating
4 B . A . WILLS

costs, large unit machines have facilitated control, as less instrumentation is required, and
a major development in grinding has been the increasing use of computers to automatically
control and simulate circuit performance.

Steel consumption can be considerable in conventional rod and ball mills, and this can be
greatly reduced by grinding autogenously. Autogenous, and particularly semi-autogenous
mills have become widely used in N.America, particularly on the large throughput porphyry
operations. There is some evidence to show that liberation may be improved over steel
grinding, and recent evidence suggests that autogenous grinding may improve the flotation
performance of sulphide ores. There is galvanic interaction between corroding steel rods and
balls, which can lead to the deposition of hydrophilic species on the contacting cathodic
sulphide particles [2,3].

LIBERATION ENHANCEMENT

As well as being relatively inefficient in their utilization of energy, tumbling mills are also
inefficient promoters of mineral liberation, the nature of the grinding force being relatively
indiscriminate. Ideally, comminution forces should be directed at the mineral crystal
boundaries, and there have been efforts to use tensile forces to try to draw existing
fractures further apart. The Snyder process was an early attempt [4], and there have been
recent reports of methods utilizing electric and ultrasonic energy [5], and high-voltage
pulses to generate plasma in the rocks and explode them from within [6].

Work at Camborne School of Mines has shown that liberation of minerals can be improved
by prior heat treatment of the crushed ore prior to conventional grinding [7]. A hard-rock
tin ore was heated to 600°C before being quenched in water. The differential expansion and
contraction promoted intergranular fracturing (Figure 1) and a significant reduction in
grinding resistance, due to the micro-cracks produced in the ore minerals. An economic
evaluation has showed that only a 1% improvement in tin recovery would make such heat
treatment viable, as the increase in smelter revenue, together with the reduction in grinding
energy, would offset the energy required to heat the ore. The optimisation of this
potentially useful technique is the subject of another paper [8].

Fig.l Effect of thermal treatment on ore from South Crofty

tin mine, Cornwall
a. Before treatment b. After heating to 600°C and water quenching.
Intergranular cracks developed between cassiterite (light grey)
and quartz (dark)

Fines losses in the treatment of such hard-rock tin ores are notoriously high, sometimes
accounting for more than 30% of the mined cassiterite. The indiscriminate nature of
conventional grinding undoubtedly contributes to this problem, and work has suggested that
choked roll crushing might enhance liberation and that it could possibly be used as an
alternative to conventional coarse grinding, such as rod milling.
 Comminution in the minerals industry 5

Much interest has recently been focussed on the high-pressure roller press, developed in
Germany, which is essentially a highly sophisticated type of rolls crusher capable of
generating very high interparticle pressures. There is evidence to show that liberation can
be improved by using these devices and they are currently being used successfully to
comminute cement and limestone, and it is expected that they will have a use in the
grinding of industrial and metalliferous ores. Preliminary testwork at Camborne has shown
that high-pressure roller comminution may enhance the liberation of cassiterite from its
gangue minerals, and may be a potentially useful method for the treatment of ores in which
fines losses are a serious problem [9].

SUMMARY

Most of the important developments in comminution have been aimed at reducing its high
operating costs. It has been estimated that around 50% of a base metal concentrator's energy
costs are incurred in grinding, and of course every effort must be made to reduce this.

It is unfortunate, however, that R & D often appears to ignore the most important role of
comminution in the minerals industry. This is not merely to reduce particle size, but to
liberate minerals from each other. Conventional methods liberate relatively inefficiently,
due to the indiscriminate nature of the breakage process, and there have been relatively few
efforts made to try to improve this. Inadequate mineral liberation in itself leads to higher
energy consumptions, as finer grinding has to be performed to achieve an adequate degree
of liberation. This also leads to the generation of ultra-fine slimes particles, which may be
lost in the downstream concentration process.

The purpose of the Comminution Symposium was to review the developments that have
taken place in the design, control and optimisation of conventional comminution machines
and circuits, and to introduce novel machines and methods which will hopefully not only
reduce capital and operating costs, but also lead to more efficient downstream performance.

REFERENCES

I. Kelly, E.G., and Dawe, G.A., Modified Bond method for the evaluation of crusher
efficiency. Minerals & Metallurgical Processing 6 14-17 (Feb. 1989)

. Learmont, M.E., & Iwasaki, I., Effect of grinding media on galena flotation,
Minerals and Metallurgical Processing, 1, 136-143 (Aug. 1984)
. Adam, K., & Iwasaki, I., Effects of polarization on the surface properties of
pyrrhotite, Minerals and Metallurgical Processing, 1,246-253 (Nov. 1984)

.
Cavanaugh, W.J., & Rodgers, D.J., Applications of the Snyder Process, Proc. lOth Int.
Min. Proc. Cong., paper 46, London (1973)
. Parekh, B.K., et al, Novel comminution process uses electric and ultrasonic energy,
Mining Engng., 36, 1305-1309 (Sept. 1984)
. Anon, New ideas in mineral processing, World Mining Equipment, 10, 14-19 (June
1986)

7. Wills, B.A., et al, Thermally assisted liberation of cassiterite, Minerals and

Metallurgical Processing, 4, 94-96 (May 1987)
.
Wonnacott, G., and Wills, B.A., Optimisation of thermally assisted liberation with the
aid of computer simulation, in this volume

. Clarke, A.J., and Wills, B.A., Enhancement of cassiterite liberation by high pressure
roller comminution. Minerals Engng. 2(2) 259-262 (1989)