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IsaMill medium competency and its effect on milling performance

Article  in  Minerals and Metallurgical Processing · May 2001

DOI: 10.1007/BF03402882

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 IsaMill medium competency and its
effect on milling performance
M. Gao
Senior Metallurgist, MIM Process Technologies, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

M.F. Young and 0. Cronin

Mount Isa Mines Ltd., Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia

G. Harbort
MIM Process Technologies, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Abstract
Traditional fine-grinding mills in mineral processing rely on the use of steel medium for particle size
reduction. The IsaMill (a horizontal stirred mill with a 3,000-L net chamber volume and a rated motorpower
of 1,120 kW) has successfully adopted a novel product-separator design, which has led to a major revision
of medium use infine grinding. The IsaMill separator has successfully operated with a wide variety of medium
types, such as silica sands, river gravel, smelter slag, run-of-mine ore fractions and steel shots, with sizes
ranging from 0.5 to I0 mm. Greatflexibility in the IsaMill operations has been achieved for processing feed
as coarse as 120 p to a product asfine as 5 p.This paper discusses the performance of two inert grinding
media in the IsaMills that are used at Mount Isa Mines Ltd. for the processing of galena- and sphalerite-
bearing ores to below I0 ,um. They are the copper reverheratory&rnace slag ICRFS) and the heavy-medium
plant rejects (HMPR).A methodology was also demonstratedfor comparing the medium pe~ormanceandfor
scaling up the IsaMills from a 1.5-L laboratory batch mill to a full-scale 3,000-L mill.
Key words: Comminution, Fine grinding, IsaMill

Introduction
The IsaMill (a horizontal stirred mill) was developed by
Mount Isa Mines Ltd. for fine or ultrafine grinding processes
in the minerals industry. The mill has a 3,000-L net chamber
volume and is driven by a 1,120-kW motor. It is now operating
in a number of base-metal mines for economically reducing
the size of mineral particles to as fine as 80% passing 7 pm
(P80 sizing) (Enderle et a]., 1997; Johnson et al., 1998).
One of the major issues for fine grinding with stirred mills
is the medium selection. The traditional medium, such as
silica-alumina-zirconia (SAZ) beads, for stirred mills costs
more than US$25/kg. A load of the SAZ medium alone for an
IsaMill costs more than US$125,000. For high-value powders
in the pigment or cosmetic industries, such a cost may be
justified by the high return from the product values. But, for
the minerals industry, the unit value of the end product is low.
Thus, alternative low-cost media must be
sought, preferably local and dispensable. Table 1 -
At an earlier stage of the IsaMill develop- zinc rougher concentrate.
ment, glass beads (US$4/kg) and river sands
(US$O.l/kg) were tested. Their performance l3ement
was satisfactory as the IsaMill medium, but
Pb
the glass beads were still expensive for pro-
cessing low-value minerals, and the river sand Zn
had a disadvantage of not being available Fe
locally. S 21.5
Further study discovered that there were SiO,
two waste materials found on the Mount Isa .
Mines lease that could be used as the medium for the IsaMill.
They are the copper reverberatory furnace slag (CRFS) and
the heavy-medium plant rejects (HMPR). After extensive
trials in laboratories and in full-scale plant operations, these
local waste materials were successfully used as the IsaMill
grinding medium for producing products that were 80%
passing 10 or finer.
This paperreports on the evaluation process for theIsaMill's
medium performance. A methodology for scale-up is also
introduced using the data from a 1.5-L laboratory mill and a
full-size IsaMill in the zinc regrinding circuit of the leadlzinc
concentrator at Mount Isa Mines Ltd., Australia.
Experimental
Test material. The material for verifying the medium compe-
tence was the zinc rougher concentrate. The assays of the
material are listed in Table 1. Its particle size
A of the ~ ~ s a ~ distribution
~ measured
~ ~ by aMalvern Laser Sizer
is given in Fig. 1. The size distribution has an
80% passing size of 46 pm.
Assay, %
Medium preparation. The copper reverbera-
4.77
tory furnace slag (CRFS) and the heavy-me-
16.3
dium plant reject (HMPR) werecollected from
19.5
the site of Mount Isa Mines to test as IsaMill
grinding medium. Two size fractions for each
15.5 material were produced in a laboratory for the
test work, i.e., -1.7 +0.4 mmand-0.8 +0.3 mm.

Preprint number 00-034, presented at the SME Annual Meeting, February 28-March 1,2000, Salt Lake City, Utah. Revised
manuscript accepted for publication December 2000. Discussion of this peer-reviewed and approved manuscript is invited
and must be submitted to SME Publications Dept. prior to Nov. 30, 2001 Copyright 2001, Society for Mining, Metallurgy,
and Exploration, Inc.

MINERALS & METALLURGICAL PROCESSING 117 VOL. 18, NO. 2 MAY 2001
 -.-- - ~ -

j I
0.45 - I
+CRFS
0.40 --
!
Ij : -0- HMPR
I
0.35 -1 - -
f
8

-1
0.30 -1
-
0
0.25 -. 1
f

10 15 20 25 30 35

500 Grinding time, min

Figure 5 - Net mill power draw of CRFS and HMPR

media (-0.85 +0.3-mm media size).
r0
.-c, loo
70

5a so
40
30
>
p 20
al
5
c 10
s 7

Figure 4 - CRFS and HMPR media performance.

tests, as is seen in Fig. 5. On average, the CRFS medium drew P80, pm

about 0.33 kW and the HMPR about 0.1 1 kW. The medium
Figure 6 -CRFS and HMPR media energy performance
ability to draw different power during the milling process (-1.7 +0.4-mm media size).
showed a significant effect on the energy consumption as well
as the milling capacity.
Figure 6 shows the energy required by CRFS and HMPR
media at different product P80 sizing. The lighter HMPR
seemed to consume less energy than the heavier CRFS for a
P80 sizing coarser than 5 pm.The difference increases when
the product size becomes coarser.
On the other hand, as is shown in Fig. 7, the CRFS required
less grinding time than the HMPR for a given P80 size. The
grinding time during a batch test is proportional to the mill
capacity for a full-scale production unit. Thus, the results in
Fig. 7 indicate that the CRFS medium, though less energy
efficient for a P80 sizing coarser than 5 p,is a better medium
of the two for achieving a high mill throughput. The differ-
ence, as can be seen in Fig. 7, is about two to three times for
a P80 below 10 pn.

IsaMill scale-up
Scale-up with the CRFS medium. The energy vs. P80
relationships for the 3,000-L IsaMill and the 1.5-L Netzsch
laboratory mill using the CRFS as medium are shown in Fig.
8. A major feature of the diagram is that the energy vs. P80
relationships for the two mills were both on a straight line on
a log-log scale. This line covered a P80 sizing range of 3 to 30
p or an energy consumption range of 15 to more than 400
kWh/t.
The scalability based on the energy vs. P80 relationship for
different stirred mills has been reported before for mill sizes
Figure 7 - CRFS and HMPR medium productivity (-1.7
+0.4-mm media size).
up to 20 L (Weit et al., 1986). The results in Fig. 8 further
demonstrated that the energy-P80 relationship holds up well,
even for a stirred mill of 3,000 L.
Scale-up with HMPR medium. A good correlation for the
energy-P80 relationship between the 3,000-L IsaMill and the
1.5-L Netzsch mill was also confirmed by using the HMPR

MINERALS 8 METALLURGICAL PROCESSING 119 VOL. 18, NO. 2 MAY 2001

 Figure 8 - IsaMill scale-up with CRFS medium.
medium as is shown in Fig. 9. The results for the IsaMill were
from the test work described in a report by Duffy (1996).
Conclusions
The competence of two inert IsaMill media, namely,
copper reverberatory furnace slag (CRFS) and heavy-
medium plant rejects (HMPR), were studied. It was
shown that, for both medium, specific gravity and
medium size affect the IsaMill's efficiency. The results
lor the medium specific gravity indicated that the lighter
HMPR medium (specific gravity = 2.6) was more en-
ergy efficient than the heavier CRFS (specific gravity =
3.7) but produced less finished product per unit of time
(less milling capacity). On the other hand, the study
with two medium fractions (- 1.7 +0.4 mm and -0.8 +0.3
mm) indicated that the finer medium (for both HMPR
and CRFS) was more energy efficient for performing a
similar size reduction duty.
A scale-up procedure for designing the world's largest
horizontal stirred mill, the IsaMill, was demonstrated
with data from a 1.5-L laboratory stirred mill and a
MAY 2001
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. VOL. 18 NO. 2
Figure 9 - IsaMill scale-up with HMPR medium.
3,000-L IsaMill. Under similar conditions, e.g., feed
size, medium size and medium type, the relationships
between the energy consumption and the product P80
sizing of both mills followed a linear correlation on a
log-log scale. This energy-P80 sizing relationship formed
the basis for the scale-up of the IsaMills.
Acknowledgment
The authors wish to acknowledge the management of Mount
Isa Mines Ltd. for permission to publish this paper.
References
Duffy, M., 1996, "Bead Mill Regrinding of Zinc Cyclone Underflow," MIM
Technical Report.
Enderle, U., Woodall, P., Duffy, M., and Johnson, N.W., 1997, "Stirred mill
technology for regrinding McArthur River and Mount Isa zincllead ores,"
Proceedings of the XX IMPC, Aachen, Sept. 21-26, Vol. 2, pp. 71-78
Johnson, N.W., Gao, M., Young, M.F., andcronin. B., 1998. "Application ofthe
ISAMILL (a horizontal stirred mill) to the lead-zinc concentrator (Mount Isa
Mines Ltd.) and the mining cycle," Proceedings of the AuslMM Annual
Conference; The Mining Cycle, Mount Isa, April 19-23, pp. 291 -297.
Weit, H., Schwedes, J. and Stehr, N., 1986, "Comminution and transport
behaviour of agitated ball mills," 6th European Symposium Comminution,
Nurnberg, 16-18, April, pp. 709-724.
MINERALS & METALLURGICAL PROCESSING