Ball Mill Still Has a Long Way to Go

Date:09/23/2012 11:21:57

Grinding work is the continuation of the crushing process, belonging to preparation work before ore selecting. Ball mill is the most widely used machine in grinding operation. The grinding process is like this: material is fed into continuously rotating rotary cylinder, inside which different grinding bodies with various shapes, such as balls, bars, short cylinders (grinding section), large ores and gravels, are installed. When the barrel rotates at a certain speed, the grinding bodies are driven in rotation and impact force which achieves grinding effect will be produced. Therefore, external force is exerted on the ball mill grinding bodies, and then transferred to the material. Therefore, the grinding bodies are also called grinding medium.

Since 1893, for over 100 years, ball mill has been widely used in metallurgy, chemical industry, mine, cement, ceramics, medicine, construction and electric power industries. Dressing index depends on the quality of material to a large extent. If mineral liberation degree is not high, the selecting index will not be ideal. Coenobium without monomer separation will reduce the concentrate grade if it is classified into concentrate and will reduce the recycle rate of valuable mineral. On the other hand, minerals should not be over-crushed. Over-crushing not only increases power consumption, steel consumption, but also will worsen dressing index and hurt mineral recovery.

Both power and metal consumption are relatively large in the grinding operation. The usual power consumption is about 6 to 30 kw/h/ton, which occupies 30-75% of the total consumption, sometimes reaches 85%. The consumption of grinding medium and lining board reaches 0.4-3.0 kg/ton. However, the fact that the ball mill is not washed out after so long time industrial application and development shows that from structure to working principle, the ball mill is basically reliable and reasonable and performance is also good.

Although it has certain shortcomings, to weed it out from the ore grinding process is quite difficult. In-depth study on ball mill in the future will still be very necessary and valuable because it will continue to be the main equipment in ore grinding.

Therefore, seeing from the importance of production and economic benefits, we should constantly carry out research to improve the grinding methods and technology, develop new equipment and new type wear resistant material to reduce the cost of ore processing, which will has important practical significance to reduce dressing cost and improve dressing index. It is also the reason why the ball mill research is taken seriously at home and abroad.