FINE GRINDING IN THE AUSTRALIAN MINING INDUSTRY

Dr Aleksandar Jankovic, Walter Valery, David La Rosa

Metso Minerals Process Technology Australia and Asia-Pacific

ABSTRACT

Fine grinding of metalliferous ores has become increasingly important for the Australian mining
industry, as many of the remaining orebodies are very fine-grained and refractory. It is however
an energy intensive process and as conventional equipment is not capable of providing
economically sound production, new solutions are being implemented. The most successful
application is stirred milling technology as it meets three major criteria: capacity, efficiency and
reliability. Several major ore deposits classified as “untreatable” in the past were developed
recently thanks to stirred milling technology. Different types of stirred mills are being used in
various applications and demand for stirred mills is growing rapidly. The research work has
shown that the ”grinding media stress intensity” analysis can be used for the stirred milling
process optimisation and scale-up.

Key Words: stirred mills, fine grinding, energy, particle size, efficiency, stress intensity

INTRODUCTION

A fundamental purpose of comminution in minerals processing is to liberate the constituent

mineral that makes up an ore so those valuable components can be separated from the gangue.
The effective liberation of the valuable minerals remains one of the major challenges in treating
modern ore, which, due to increasing complexity and finer grain sizes, requires finer grinding to
achieve necessary degree of liberation.

In comparison to mineral concentration, coal cleaning is normally carried out at relatively coarse
sizes. However, when deep physical cleaning is carried out to produce super clean (less than 2%
ash) and ultra clean (less than 1% ash) coals, increased liberation of finely disseminated mineral
matter is required. Microscopic examination of many coals reveals that sufficient liberation may
not occur until the coal is ground finer than 20 µm (Mankosa, 1989).

As particles become smaller, the probability of flaws existing in them decreases and their
strength increases. Hence, for very small particles, higher applied forces may be needed and,
additionally, relatively high probabilities for successful application of the stress on the particles.
Such high probabilities do not exist in the conventional ball mills as they use comparatively large
grinding media. As particle size decreases, grinding media size also has to decrease for efficient
grinding to take place. As grinding media size decreases, media velocity has to increase in order
to generate sufficient energy for particle breakage. Stirred mills can achieve very high media
velocities and energy densities (300 kW/ m3 of mill volume) by stirring the media at a high (25
m/s tip speed) rate.

There is a considerable range of equipment that can be utilized in the process of fine grinding.
The more common mill types used in fine particle processing can be broadly categorized into two
main groups: media mills and non-media mills. However, to be used in the minerals processing
industry, mills are required to have high capacity and reliability to survive the harsh-operating
conditions. Several stirred mills have been developed in the past that meet the above criteria and
they will be described in this paper.

MAJOR MANUFACTURERS

There are around a dozen types of stirred mills commercially available but few of them are
actively competing in the minerals industry. They can be classified into low and high-speed mills.
The speed is defined as the tangent (tip) speed of stirrer tips (m/s). The low speed mills normally
operate at 3 m/s with an effective size reduction to about 15 microns (80% passing size). The
high-speed mills operate at a speed higher than 15 m/s with an effective size reduction to about 5
microns (80% passing size).

Metso manufactures three low speed stirred mills, namely, Vertimill, Sala Agitated Mill (SAM)
and Stirred Media Detritor (SMD) mill. These three mills cover all basic designs of low speed
stirred mills, thus putting Metso in a very strong position as a fine grinding equipment supplier.

Kubota in Japan manufactures the Tower mill. It was the first low speed stirred mill applied in
the minerals industry. There have been many installations of the Tower Mill in base metal mines
as regrinding mills and they are efficient for size reduction down to 15 microns (80% passing
sizes).

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The ANI Metprotech mill is another low speed mill that has been actively promoted in the last
ten years and was the one most extensively tested by the minerals industry. The biggest problem
of the mill is stirrer wear that has caused frequent shutdowns for maintenance during large scale
trials.

Union Process in the United States was the first manufacturer of low speed stirred mills in the
world. Union Process does not promote their mills to the minerals industry, but their customers
are widely spread in other fine powder industries such as pigment, paint, cement, industrial
minerals, cosmetic and food.

The ISAMILL, which has been jointly developed by Mount Isa Mines and Netzsch GmbH in
Germany, is the only high-speed stirred mill in operation in the minerals industry. The
advantages of the mill is relatively high throughput (above 10 tph) at very low product size (80%
passing size of 7 microns at MacArthur River application), high energy efficiency, low cost
natural grinding media and innovative system for media and slurry separation.

The competitiveness of the low speed mills lies in the facts that they cost less to build and are
cheaper to maintain. These mills are designed mainly for size reduction from 200 microns to
bellow 10 microns (80% passing sizes).

TOWER AND VERTI MILL

The Tower and Vertimill are low speed vertical stirred grinding mills, which commonly use steel
balls as the grinding media (Figure 1). The Tower mill was developed in Japan in the 1950's by
the Japan Tower Mill Company Ltd, later renamed the Kubota Tower Mill Corporation, KTM.
Vertimill is being manufactured by Metso and appeared in Australia during the 90’s. The Tower
and Vertimill consist of an internal screw flight agitator driven by a motor, a stationary vertical
grinding cylinder, a settling classifier and a pebble port which is used to remove the grinding
media. The agitators used are "double start" helical screw configuration wound around a central
shaft. "Double start" refers to two screw flights being wrapped around the same shaft to increase

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the screw density. The ball movement and resultant grinding action within the mill are the direct
result of the rotating and lifting action generated by this agitator (Stief et al, 1987).

Figure 1. Schematic of Tower and Verti mill

The screw assembly is wear protected from abrasion by covering surfaces with vulcanized rubber
and/or wear resistant steels, depending on the nature of the material being ground. For wear
resistant steels, hard-faced surfaces are welded to the screw surface to provide wear protection.
With respect to vulcanized rubber, the rubber is attached by bolts to the screw. The wear life of
the liners is now reported to be in excess of 4 months (Jankovic at al, 1999). The application of
different liners has shown that the greatest wear rates occur at the bottom of the grinding chamber
where the greatest ball to ball pressure exists. The toe or leading edge of the screw therefore
experiences the highest wear rates. The unique grid bar assembly as illustrated in Figure 1
protects the tall, cylindrical stationary wall of the mill against wear. This grid system traps balls
along the mill wall, thereby using the medium itself as a wear liner, similar to the use of grid
liners in ball mills. To protect the shell of the mill from wear, the inner wall of the grinding
chamber is itself rubber lined. To reduce downtime experienced in removing this grid bar system,
magnetic liners are now replacing the grid bar system. The ease of removal and replacement of

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these liners has increased their usage to such a point that manufacturers now specify magnetic
liners only.
Tower mills have been installed at the Mount Isa, Hilton, Hellyer and New Celebration
concentrators and a list of Verti mill installations is given in Table 1. There are over 220
Vertimill installations worldwide (Kalra, 1999) and more than 250 Tower mill installations.

Table 1. Verti mill applications in Australia (After Kalra, 1999)

Company Size & Qty Product Product t/h Application Year
Material 80% pass
Granny Smith, Placer VTM-500-WB Gold ore 20 12 Regrinding 95
tailing
Pegasus Gold, Mt VTM-1250-WB Gold ore 15 34 Regrinding 96
Todd x2
BHP Cannington VTM-800-WB Zinc and 20 30.9/ Regrinding 96
x2 Lead rougher 38.2
BHP Cannington VTM-200-WB Silver 20 9.8 Regrinding 96
MIM Ernest Henry VTM-1250-WB Copper ore 45 155 Regrinding 97
Newcrest Cadia VTM-650-WB Gold ore 53 54 Regrinding 97
Wanadium Australia VTM-800-WB Magnetite 75 67 Regrinding 99
Worsley Alumina VTM-300-WB Lime Slaking 45 18 Slaking 99

As can be seen from Table 1, the majority of Vertimills working in regrinding duties achieve
sizes as fine as 80% passing 15 µm. The most commonly used grinding media in regrinding
duties is ½ inch diameter chrome steel balls and 10mm mild steel cylpebs media. For coarser
grinding applications larger media is required.

ISAMILL

Development of ISAMILL (Figure 2) started in 1990 as a joint venture between Mount Isa Mines
Limited and NETZCH – Feinmahltechnik GmbH. At that time the largest horizontal stirred mill
was 500 litres in volume manufactured by NETZCH and a sequence of mechanical modifications
and metallurgical testing was undertaken to design a larger mill, capable of high throughputs, fine
product sizing and efficient energy utilization (Enderle et all, 1997). As the result of this
development, a 3000 litre and 1.1 MW motor power unit was designed and installed, first in
Mount Isa Mines lead/zinc concentrator (1994, two mills) and then at McArtur River Mining
(1995, five mills). In 2001 six more mills were installed at the Mount Isa Mines lead/zinc
concentrator. Two ISAMILLs were installed at KCGM’s Fimiston mine and one pilot unit at one
Anglo Platinum mine in South Africa. The indication of the ISAMILL performance is given in
Table 2.

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 Figure 2. Schematic of ISAMILL

It can be seen from Table 2 that very fine products can be produced using ISAMILL at relatively
low energy consumption. It should be noted that this fineness of grind is far below conventional
minerals processing experience. The ability to achieve such a fine product at an economic level
enables the processing of deposits that were considered in the past as “untreatable”.

Table 2. Summary of the ISAMILL operating parameters at Mount Isa and McArtur river sites -
(After Enderle et all, 1997)
Site Solids % Solids Net energy Product 80% passing size
Flowrate (t/h) by weight (kWh/t) temperature Feed Product
Mount Isa 65 40 7.6 40-45 20 12
McArtur River
- Open circuit 20 20 28 40-50 30 8
-Closed circuit 15 20 36 40-50 30 7

It should be noted that the high rotating speed of the discs inside the mill generate high wear
conditions and to increase the component life for any giving grinding media, the optimum
balance between the resilience and tear resistance of the components must be determined. At
present, the maintenance period for the McArthur River site is 8 weeks and for the Mount Isa
operation, 10 weeks. Grinding media used is granulated slag from the lead smelter at Mount Isa
and screened ore at the McArthur River grinding circuit. Shorter maintenance periods are
reported at KCGM due to more pronounced wear with silica sand grinding media.

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ISAMILL is a low throughput device and it is therefore applicable for very fine products below
15 microns where high energy input (kWh/t) is required. At higher throughputs so called
“hydraulic packing” can occur which leads to higher wear and grinding media loss. Industrial
results indicate that mill performance deteriorates for coarser slurry feed sizes, where the 80%
passing size is greater than 50 microns.

STIRRED MEDIA DETRITOR (SMD)

ECC International developed its first SMD mill in the 1960’s and currently around 200 mills
operate in the kaolin and calcium carbonate processing plants. The first installation in Australia
was at the Elura lead/zinc mine where two mills are in operation. There are 15 SMD mills
installed at the Century Zinc mine concentrator for zinc rougher concentrate grinding down to a
P80 of 7 µm.
The mill consists of an octagonal body that supports a suspended internal multi-armed impeller.
Mill feed slurry is introduced through the top and the ground product discharges through the
grinding media retention screens that can be situated around the top or at the base of the mill
body. Mills with the top screen arrangement are normally utilized for low energy input
applications, below 100 kWh/t, while “bottom” screen arrangement is used in applications over
100 kWh/t. Top screen mills have an 185 kW motor, while bottom screen mills have a 355 kW
motor. Silica sand is commonly used as the grinding media with the media size being dependent
on the product size. Use of other natural materials as the grinding media is also possible.

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 Figure 3. Drawing 185kW Stirred Media Detritor (SMD)

NATURAL GRINDING MEDIA

The performance of stirred mills depends on many factors, the most important being the grinding
media related properties such as:

- size
- density
- shape
- competency
- mill wear
- economics

One of the attractive features of the stirred mills is the use of the natural grinding media.
Production cost can be significantly reduced if inexpensive, ready available natural media can be
effectively used. This media can also be advantageous for downstream processes. In some
situations mill selection may be decided based on downstream effects and economical benefits

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from natural media. Therefore, full effort should be directed to find the most “economical”
natural media for a particular application.

a.

b.
Figure 4. Different types of natural grinding media: a – sand; b - slag

The performance of stirred mill can be evaluated using the “grinding media stress intensity”
(Kwade, 1995, Jankovic, 2001) approach:

SIm = D 3m (ρm - ρ) v t2 (1)

where: Dm - grinding media size (m)

ρm - grinding media density (kg/m3)
ρ - slurry density (kg/m3)
vt - stirrer tip speed (m/s)
SIm - stress intensity of the grinding media (Nm)

The plot of milling product 80% passing size versus the stress intensity for the pilot Tower and
SAM mill is presented in Figure 5. The graph indicates that there is an optimum stress intensity
range where the finest product is obtained for the same 20 kWh/t net energy consumption. The
two mills appear to have different trends and different optimum stress intensity ranges.

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 35
2 0 kWh/t
30

P80( m) 25

20

15
SAM pilot, 8 mm media
10 SAM pilot, media < 8mm
SAM lab, 4.8 mm media
TOWER pilot, 12 mm media
5 TOWER pilot, media < 12mm
TOWER lab, 4.8 mm media
0
0.0 0.1 1.0 10.0 100.0
Stress Intesity (Nm*0.001)

Figure 1: Grinding product size at 20 kWh/t energy input as a function of stress intensity – After
Jankovic 2001

In the optimum stress intensity region the grinding efficiency was highest as the finest product is
obtained for a given specific energy input (kWh/t). Therefore the “stress intensity” analysis can
be used for the stirred milling process optimisation and scale-up.

CONCLUSION

A number of fine grinding stirred mills are being used in the Australian minerals industry for
benificiation of fine-grained base metals ores. These mills have superior performance compared
to conventional ball mills and demand is growing rapidly. Application of Tower and Vertimills
has become “routine” in recent years as they have been proven to have exceptional operational
performance for product sizes down to 20 µm. For finer products, mills using “natural” grinding
media (silica sand, granulated slag etc) were found to be more energy efficient. These mills
(ISAMILL, SMD mills) were adopted from other industries and developed to suit the minerals
processing requirements. Application of these mills has enabled very rich but very fine grained
deposits (e.g. Century Zinc, McArthur River and George Fisher orebodies) to be economically
viable and based on these experiences other companies are becoming increasingly aware of this
new technology.

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The grinding process in stirred mills is controlled by the grinding media “stress intensity”, a term
that combines effect of grinding media size, density and bed height, slurry density and stirrer
speed. The stress intensity reflects the energy involved in a breakage event. If the energy is too
low, several stress events would be required to break the particle which would cause a reduction
in breakage rate. If the energy is much higher than required for breakage, it will be wasted.

REFERENCES

Kalra, R., 1999. Overview on Alternative Methods for Fine and Ultra-Fine Grinding., IIR Conference,
Crushing & Grinding ‘99, Perth

Stief, D.E., Lawruk, W.A. and Wilson, L.J., 1987. Tower mill and its application to fine grinding. Miner. and
Metall. Process., Vol. 4, No. 1, Feb., pp 45-50.

Lofthouse, C.H., and Johns, F.E., 1999. The Metso (ECC international) Detritor and Metals Industry. Minerals Eng,
Vol 12, No 2, pp. 205-207

Jankovic, A., Young, M., Hinds, D., 1999. Tower fine Milling Experience at Mount Isa Mines. In: N. Jackson, G.
Dunlop, and P. Cameron (Editors), Mineral Processing & Hydrometallurgy Plant Design, Australian Mineral
Foundation, ISBN No: 0-908039-70-0

Underle, U., Woodall, P., Duffy, M., and Johnson , N.W., 1997. Stirred mill technology for regrinding McArthur
River and Mount Isa zinc/lead ores. Proceesings of XX IMPC – Aachen, 21 –26 September, pp. 71-78

Mankosa, M.J., Adel, G.T., and Yoon, R.H., 1989. Effect of operating parameters in stirred ball mill grinding of
coal. Powd. Tech., Vol. 59, pp 255-260.

Kwade et all., 1995. Motion and stress intensity of grinding beads in a stirred media mill. Part2: Stress intensity and
its effect on comminution. Powder Technology vol. 86, pp. 69-76

Jankovic, A., 2001. Media Stress Intensity Analysis for Vertical Stirred Mills, Minerals Engeneering, vol 14.
Special issue from MEI Conference Comminution 01, Brisbane - Australia, pp. 1177-1186

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