What is the cause of ore sliming and what is the impact on ball mill grinding?

Ore mudification is a problem that often needs to be faced during the mineral processing process. Whether it is ferrous metal, non-ferrous metal or non-metallic ore, mudification may occur. Mud mainly comes from clay minerals in the ore deposit, or ore that is connected by clay and weathered into fine particles. Ore mudification will affect grinding and thus affect the entire mineral processing process. So how to deal with this problem? This article will talk about this issue.

What are the effects of ore mudification on grinding?

Ore mudification will affect the grinding efficiency of the ball mill, causing the mineral processing process to be blocked, increase energy consumption, and even affect the quality of the grinding product. Specifically, it is manifested in:

1. Reduce grinding efficiency: Mudified ore will increase the wear of the grinding medium during the grinding process, and the muddy material is easy to adhere to the surface of the grinding medium, reducing the grinding efficiency.

2. Affect the smooth flow of the mineral processing process: Mudified ore is easy to form mud in the process of transportation and feeding, which may cause silos, chutes, funnels and other equipment to be blocked, affecting the smooth flow of the entire mineral processing process.

3. Increase energy consumption: Due to the viscosity of muddy ore, crushing and grinding equipment requires greater power to overcome the adhesion between materials, thereby increasing energy consumption.

4. Affect product quality: Muddy ore is prone to over-grinding during the grinding process, which not only reduces the quality of the grinding product, but also may affect the subsequent beneficiation effect.

5. Increase equipment maintenance costs: Muddy ore aggravates the wear of equipment, requiring more frequent equipment maintenance and replacement of wearing parts, increasing production costs.

Reduce the impact of ore mudification by improving the grinding process

Although ore mudification will have many effects on grinding, we can still minimize the adverse consequences of this effect by improving the grinding process. Common process improvement measures are:

1. Use (semi) autogenous grinding process

Autogenous or semi-autogenous grinding processes can effectively treat muddy ore and reduce blockage problems. The autogenous grinding process uses the ore itself as the grinding medium, while the semi-autogenous grinding process adds a small amount of steel balls on the basis of autogenous grinding to improve the grinding efficiency.

2. Washing process

Wash the ore with more mud to remove clay materials, prevent the blockage of crushing and screening equipment, ore bins, chutes, funnels, etc., and improve the process conditions of crushing operations.

3. Optimize the crushing process

Adjust the discharge port setting of the crusher and the design of the crushing chamber to adapt to the characteristics of muddy ores and reduce blockage and over-grinding.

4. Add pretreatment facilities

Add desludging and dehydration facilities such as vibrating screens, spiral classifiers and concentrators before crushing to reduce the muddy materials entering the crushing and grinding process.

5. Improve the feeding system

Use pre-screening and pre-crushing technology to reduce the impact of large clay materials on the crushing and grinding process.

6. Adjust grinding parameters

Adjust the type and filling rate of grinding media, grinding time and grinding fineness according to the degree of ore mudification to optimize the grinding effect.

7. Improve the level of automation control

The production process can be monitored and adjusted in real time through the automation control system to adapt to the changes in ore properties and reduce the impact of muddy ore on production.

Through the above process improvement measures, the adverse effects of ore muddy on the mineral processing process can be effectively reduced, the mineral processing efficiency and product quality can be improved, and the production cost and environmental risks can be reduced.