Minerals Engineering International’s (MEI’s) Comminution ’18 conference has wrapped up for another two years, and Barry Wills shared some of the highlights of this year’s contributions on his recent blog. CEEC picked out some of these in particular.
Wills said that with higher needs for fine grinding combined with advanced flotation, reducing energy and water in comminution and other mineral processing was becoming even more critical. The Comminution ’18 conference is a key to how industry can tackle this challenge. He said new ideas shared at Comminution ’18 included new crusher developments, HPGRs, fine grinding devices and circuits – “all offering new approaches and much hope for the future.”
“Liberation, achieved through comminution, is one of the most relevant aspects in ore processing. The global efficiency of a plant often depends on the performance of the grinding circuit, so there is a compromise between particle size, energy consumption and liberation. An adequate prediction of the liberation of grinding products can be helpful in reducing overgrinding, and therefore, reducing energy consumption without disturbing downstream operations,” he said.
Modelling and simulation to achieve the best outcomes are an important part of the solution, with many speakers sharing new work and new approaches.
Presenters included many CEEC sponsors, such as Bianco Foggiatto and Rajiv Chandramohan of Ausenco, Hamid Manouchehri of Sandvik, Haijie Li of FLSmidth, Chris Steyn of Anglo American, Greg Anderson from Glencore Technology, representatives from Metso and more.
CEEC was pleased to again be an industry advocate for this conference. Nick Wilshaw, CEEC Advocate and Mike Battersby, CEEC Director attended the conference and talked to many about CEEC’s not-for-profit work. Wilshaw’s Grinding Solutions team contributed throughout and Battersby shared information on the Ro-Star mill for ultra-fine grinding, highlighting the critical collaboration path towards commercialisation in Europe.
Emmanuel Asakpo, of Newmont, shared how improvements were made at the Ahafo operation in Ghana, supplementing last year’s CEEC Medal winning paper by Aidan Giblett and Steven Hart of Newmont. Mark De Geus shared a new ‘virtual sensor’ approach for SAG mill performance using operational data, helping reduce scheduled liner wear stoppages and optimise ball charge levels. Markus Stapelmann and Hakan Benzer of Loesche described the first application of a vertical roller mill in a sulphide copper-gold ore project.
Leading researchers presented from around the world, including the participants from the Global Comminution Collaborative. Hakan Benzer of Hacettepe University, Turkey, talked about how novel energy efficient comminution circuit flowsheets can incorporate energy efficient dry comminution technologies such as HPGR and Vertimill for significant energy savings. Holger Lieberwirth, of TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany, asked a question in his keynote lecture “will SAG mills still be relevant in 50 years’ time?”
In introducing Hamid Manouchehri from CEEC sponsor Sandvik, wills noted that mining is energy intensive, and grinding was responsible for consuming about 40% of the energy in the whole mining chain.
“Inefficiency in grinding has long been an outstanding problem, in particular when production of fines and ultra-fines are considered. Unlike milling, crushers are much more energy efficient, therefore it is logical to push the comminution process towards the crushing stage for energy efficiency. Furthermore, crushing is done dry which reduces water consumption and related potential water contamination,” he said.
Manouchehri’s presentation shared new crushing chamber technology to tackle these challenges.