Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 590592

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Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

Technical Note

Comminution environment and gold particle morphology: Effects on

gravity concentration
G. Ofori-Sarpong a,, R.K. Amankwah b
a
Energy and Mineral Engineering Department, Penn State University, 216 Hosler Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA
b
Mineral Engineering Department, University of Mines and Technology, P.O. Box 237, Tarkwa, Ghana

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In many laboratories and processing plants, different comminution equipment are used in preparing gold
Available online 3 March 2011 ores for gravity concentration. For malleable metals such as gold, particle shape changes in response to
the forces applied during comminution, and these shapes can inuence gravity concentration. In this
Keywords: study, the morphology of gold particles milled in different equipment was investigated. The disc and
Comminution equipment hammer mills generated cigar-shaped and globular particles respectively. The vibratory pulveriser
Morphology created aky particles while the ball mill formed a mix of aky, folded and irregularly shaped particles.
Gold particles
Gravity concentration produced enrichment ratios of 28.3, 24.0, 23.6 and 21.7 for the hammer mill, disc
Gravity separation
Enrichment ratio
mill, ball mill and vibratory pulveriser respectively. The results show that the comminution equipment
utilized should be taken into consideration in decisions regarding gravity gold recovery.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the morphology and grain sizes of gold particles generated after
milling samples in four equipment that utilize different forces in
The shapes and sizes of rock particles formed during comminu- particle breakage were investigated. Semi-quantitative analysis of
tion processes depend on many factors such as the equipment uti- the effect of these shapes on gravity gold recovery is also
lized, stress application, residence time as well as the material presented.
characteristics (Holt, 1981; Napier-Munn et al., 1999; Wills, 2006).
These particle shapes play an important role in many subse-
quent operations in the construction, chemical engineering and
2. Experimental investigations
mineral processing industries (Ishai and Gelber, 1982; Hutchings,
1987; Meier and Elnicky, 1989; Trass et al., 1995). For malleable
Samples from an auriferous quartz vein obtained from the
minerals such as gold, the modication of shape and hence equiv-
Birimian rock system of Ghana was utilized in this study. A bulk
alent diameter during comminution has severe implications on
sample of 120 kg crushed to 25 mm was prepared for gravity
downstream processes such as gravity concentration, which uti-
concentration using standard techniques. The sample was split
lizes these particle characteristics to effect separation (Wills,
into four sub-samples using rifes, and three of them were crushed
2006).
in a jaw crusher, followed by roll crushing to 2 mm, whereas the
Various researchers have investigated changes in gold particle
fourth went through hammer milling. The roll-crushed product
shapes in grinding circuits, and the effect of shape and size on
was milled further in a laboratory size disc mill, ball mill or vibra-
separation processes (Banisi et al., 1991; Laplante et al., 1995;
tory pulveriser. The Denver disc mill had a disc diameter of
Houseley et al., 1997, 1998). Most of these studies are limited to
200 mm and a capacity of 25 kg/h. The Denver ball mill of length
particles naturally modied by uvial transportation and those
300 mm and diameter 200 mm, which rotates at 60 rev/min was
generated by ball milling. However, different comminution equip-
lled to 45% of its internal volume with a mix of 6030 mm diam-
ment are utilized in preparing gold ores for gravity concentration
eter steel balls. One kilogram sub-samples were each milled for
and it is necessary to expand the investigations.
20 min in the ball mill. The Bico vibratory pulveriser VP 1989
This paper is a contribution to the collection of knowledge on
was fed with 200 g of sample at a time and pulverised for 150 s.
comminution, particle shapes and metal recovery. In this research,
The hammer mill used had a capacity of 0.4 t/h with hammers
rotating at about 900 rpm, and particles were milled till they were
Corresponding author. ne enough to pass through a grate with opening of 0.5 mm. In all
E-mail addresses: gad164@psu.edu, goforisarp@gmail.com (G. Ofori-Sarpong), cases, milling was done dry, and the grade of gold in the samples
rkamankwah@umat.edu.gh (R.K. Amankwah). was determined by conventional re assaying.

0892-6875/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2011.02.014
 G. Ofori-Sarpong, R.K. Amankwah / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 590592 591

Size analysis was performed on representative sub-samples of
each milled material on a nest of sieves built according to the Tyler
series. Twenty-ve kilograms of each milled sample were sub-
jected to gravity concentration in a 3 in. Knelson concentrator at
a pressure of 1 psi, and the clean concentrate was re-cleaned using
the blow and tap technique before microscopic analysis. The gold
grain size distribution was also determined using the method of
sieving and grain size counting (Styles et al., 2002, 2010), and the
shapes were observed using a Leitz Laborlux research microscope.
3. Results and discussions
3.1. Particle morphology
The equipment investigated utilize different forces. While the
hammer mill employs mainly impact forces (Wills, 2006), the disc
mill applies shear and the vibratory pulveriser uses compressive
forces. In ball mills, grinding may occur by several mechanisms,
including impact and compression when applied forces are almost
normal to the particle surface. In addition chipping may occur due
to oblique forces, and abrasion due to forces acting parallel to the
particle surface (Holt, 1981; Napier-Munn et al., 1999; Wills,
2006).
The shape of gold particles generated after hammer milling
were globular as shown in Fig. 1a. At the particle size generated
in this study, the hammers may not have had direct contact with
the gold and the particles may possibly have maintained their
shapes as they occur in the ore.
Typically, the disc mill is equipped with two rotating discs with
corrugated surfaces. When malleable particles such as gold make
contact with the surface, they are sheared, attened and rolled into
cigar-shaped units (Fig. 1b). The compressive forces utilized by the
vibratory pulveriser has the potential to atten out the gold parti-
cles to produce at pitted units as ore particles are forced to make
imprints on the liberated metal in response to the forces as pre-
sented in Fig. 1c.
After ball milling the shapes were not uniform (Fig. 1d) as par-
followed by the ball mill at 106 lm, disc mill at 150 lm and the
hammer-mill at 500 lm. The grain size measurements in Fig. 2
indicates that more than 97% of particles liberated by the vibratory
pulveriser were coarser than 75 lm with about 10% bigger than
1200 lm. The gold liberated by disc milling was much ner and
about 83% of the particles were coarser than 75 lm. The hammer
mill generated particles of size between that of the vibratory pul-
veriser and disc mill, with 80% above 75 lm. The grain size count-
ing results for the ball-milled sample showed that about 70% of the
particles had sizes greater than 75 lm.
Though the product of the vibratory pulveriser gave the small-
est P80 value the liberated gold particles were coarser than those
produced by the other machines. This indicates that though the
ore particles had been milled very ne, the gold being malleable
rather attened out under the compressive forces utilized in the
pulveriser.
3.3. Corey shape factors of mill products and gravity response
Sphericity indices are used to evaluate the extent of deviation
from the geometrical spherical form, and one of such is the corey
shape factor (CSF) given by equation (Pye, 1994):
c
CSF p 1
ab
where a is the largest length associated with the particle, b is an
intermediate length and c is the minimum length, all measured at
perpendicular angles.
The more a particle deviates from the ideal spherical shape, the
greater its drag coefcient and the lower its terminal velocity. The
corey shape factors (CSF) of the gold particles liberated by the
50
vibratory pulverizer
disc mill
40 hammer mill
Weight percent

ball mill
ticles were aky, folded or irregular in shape, with smooth or pit- 30
ted surfaces. In an earlier study by Banisi et al. (1991), it was
postulated that for gold particles undergoing size reduction in a
20
ball mill, relatively globular particles may become serrated and un-
dergo shape changes through folding, attening and possibly back
10
to the globular shape at ner size. It appears that the size range
presented in Fig. 1d is within the stage of folding and attening.
0
+1200 -1200+600 -600+300 -300+150 -150+75 -75
3.2. Gold grain size distribution
Gold particle size, m
Particle size distribution of the products showed that the vibra- Fig. 2. Grain size distribution of gold after milling in different comminution
tory pulveriser gave the nest grind at 80% passing 100 lm (P80) equipment.

500 m 500 m 500 m

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Fig. 1. Morphology of gold particles generated by (a) hammer milling (b) disc milling, (c) pulverising and (d) ball milling.
592 G. Ofori-Sarpong, R.K. Amankwah / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 590592
1 ment that has the potential to liberate rounded particles has
disc-milled
hammer-milled
0.8 pulverized
ball-milled
Shape factor
0.6
0.4
0.2
0 folded and irregularly shaped particles. Enrichment ratios of 28.3,
0 500 1000
Particle size, microns
Fig. 3. Changes in shape factor for different size fractions after size reduction in
hammer, disc and ball mills and vibratory pulveriser.
comminution machines as a function of particle size are presented
in Fig. 3. The dimensions of several particles were taken and the
mean values are presented, with the error bars representing the
standard error of the means.
The gold particles liberated by hammer milling were spherical
and the CSF of all liberated particles were between 0.95 and 0.80.
Those liberated by disc milling, on the other hand, were in the
range of 0.60 and 0.35. The CSF for the ball-milled sample was
greater than 0.5 for the size range above 425 lm but reduced grad-
ually with particle size to 0.43 at 150 lm and began to rise to over
0.5 as particle size reduced to 53 lm. This behaviour may be attrib-
uted to the changes in shape from aky through folding to globular
following reduction in particle size as discussed by Banisi et al.
(1991).
Despite having coarser particles, the CSF of the pulverised sam-
ples were lowest and in the range 0.530.24. The graph shows that
very ne spherical particles may settle faster than cigar-shaped
and aky particles that are much coarser. These values agree with
those presented by Le Roux (1997) who placed the CSF of spherical
particles between 1.0 and 0.7, ellipsoids between 0.7 and 0.3 and
aky material between 0.3 and 0.0.
Actual gravity tests conducted on 25 kg samples of material
milled in each of these equipment indicated enrichment ratios of
28.3, 24.0, 23.6 and 21.7 for the hammer mill, disc mill, ball mill
and vibratory pulveriser respectively from a similar grade of feed
material. Though the ball-milled samples were ner, gravity recov-
ery was similar to the disc milled sample which was coarser, due to
the higher CSF of the ne ball-milled samples. Thus, when samples
are being prepared for gravity concentration, the use of an equip-
advantages over those that generate cigar shaped and aky
particles.
4. Conclusions
In laboratories and processing plants, several types of commi-
nution equipment are utilized in preparing gold ores for gravity
concentration and this study investigated the effect of four of such
equipment on morphology of gold particles and the implications
on gravity recovery. The hammer and disc mills generated globular
and cigar-shaped particles respectively while the vibratory pulver-
iser produced aky particles. The ball mill produced a mix of aky,
1500
24.0, 23.6 and 21.7 were obtained for materials prepared by the
hammer, disc, and ball mills and vibratory pulveriser respectively.
This should inform stakeholders in the selection of equipment for
preparing materials for gravity gold recovery.
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