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Data1999 PDF
Data1999 PDF
Data1999 PDF
133-140, 1999
© 1999 Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0008-4433/99 $19.00+0.00
PH: 80008-4433(98)00039-1
PERGAMON
(Received 28 October 1997; received in revised form 1 December 1998; accepted 1 December 1998)
Abstract-Ball mills, like other comminution devices, consume large amounts of energy. Mill operators
often have to assess the power draft of mills for an entirely different set of operating conditions or for
a reconfigured circuit. It is shown that the power draft can be accurately predicted from analysis of the
motion of the charge. The motion of the charge is rigorously simulated with a numerical technique
known as Discrete Element Method (DEM). In this technique, the coordinates and velocities of each in-
dividual ball are computed from a knowledge of forces arising when balls collide with each other and
with mill shell and lifter walls. First, simulation results on a wide range of ball mills are compared with
available experimental data. Then the power draft predictions as a function of a few operating variables
are shown. The unique feature of this method is that the mill power can be predicted for a mixture of
ball sizes, different lifter geometry and lifter spacing, which is absent in other methods proposed in the
literature. © 1999 Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved
Resume-Les broyeurs a billes, comme d'autres appareils de comminution, consommenme grande quan-
tite d'energie. Les operateurs de broyeurs ont souvent a eva1ueda demande de courant de broyeurs ayant
un ensemble completement different de conditions d'operations ou d'un circuit reconfigure. On montre
qu'a partir de l'analyse du mouvement de lacharge, l'on peut predire precisement la demande de courant.
Le mouvement de la charge est simule rigoureusement par un technique numerique connue sous Ie nom de
methode des eU~ments finis (MEF). Par cette techniquen calcule les coordonnees et la veIocite de chaque
bille individuelle, a partir de donnaissance des forces qui se produisent lorsque les billes entrent on col-
lision loanes avec les autres et avec Ie revetement du broyeur et les parois deeames. En premier lieu, les
resultats de la simulation d'un grand nombre de broyeursa billes sont compares avec les donnees experi-
mentales disponibles. Ensuite, on montre les predictions de demande de courant en fonction de quelques
variables d'operation. La caracteristique unique de cette methode est que l'on peut predire Ie courant
broyeur pour un melange de taille de billes et pour differentes geometries des carnes differents espace-
ments, ce qui manque chez d'autres methodes proposees dans la litterature. © 1999 Canadian Institute of
Mining and Metallurgy. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
understanding of the mechanics of charge motion inside the cascading charge which results in the torque being a complex
mill is of great importance. This knowledge would eventually function of all the operating variables. not as simple as
lead to the correct prediction of power and consequently implied in luany of the empirical formulae [7]. These
optimization of the process. Therefore, accurate prediction of empirical models lack detailed information about
power has received considerable attention in the past few interactions among the entities of the mill charge and also.
decades. The first systematic formulation of power draft by most of them contain several unknown paranleters. Due to
analyzing ball trajectories goes back to 1919 [1] and since all of these shortconlings. these formulae find very restricted
then a considerable amount of effort has been put to practical application.
correlate power draft and operating and design parameters Powel and Nurick [8] extended the same idea one step
of the ball mill. However, most of the theoretical formulae ahead and appropriately identified the importance of
available to quantify power draft until now, do not take into including the balls in free flight in the model. In this context.
account the underlying mechanics of the motion of the ball a term called Center Of I\1ass (COllI) has been defined. It
charge. Besides, it is easy to calculate the trajectory of a denotes the points in the mill where if all the mass is
single ball, but the complexity arises when the sanle condensed would exert an equivalent torque-arm fronl the
calculation is done for thousands of balls simultaneously. center of mill. A linear relationship of nlill speed and
With modern day computers and suitable numerical angular location of COll! was established fronl experimental
techniques it is possible to compute the trajectory of each data. The correlation certainly needs to be verified for large
ball in the charge, while they interact with one another. nlills, because the mechanics of charge nl0tion would be
In the earlier work, researchers took a continuum different for a laboratory nlill and an industrial nlill.
approach, where the whole mill charge is considered as a Moreover, the methodology for determining the location of
single body and modeled power draft from the torque-arm balls, which is needed to calculate CO A!. is too simplistic to
principle. The torque necessary to maintain the offset in the depict a real situation.
center of gravity of the cascading charge from the rest Recently, I\10rrell [9] developed a model based on the
position is given by: motion of charge. although presuming the motion to be
confined between a fixed shoulder and toe angular positions.
(1) It is assumed that the active zone of charge occupies the
place between an inner radius (ri) and the mill radius (I'm)
where, T is the torque, Mb is the mass of the balls, rg is the and the extent of this zone is limited by toe (aT) and
distance from the mill center to the center of gravity of the shoulder (Os). If the angular speed (velocities of upward and
load, and CI. is the angle of repose of the ball charge. For a downward moving balls) of the balls is lVr,. the power draft
mill running at a speed of N revolutions per minute, the of a mill of length L and bulk density of charge p. is given
power draft is given by: by:
P = 2rrTN (2)
r P.: JOs
P = 2rrg Lp
J
lVrr2 cos a dO dr (3)
A number of researchers [2-6] have derived empirical models ri Or
as shown in Table 1, using this concept. Here, mill power is
correlated with mill diameter (D), mill length (L), charge Later on, all the variables, for exanlple. rio I'm. aT and as are
angle of repose (CI.), mill filling (1), mill speed (¢ or JV), bulk calculated from operating conditions using a few empirical
density of charge (p), acceleration due to gravity (g) and correlations. I\10rrell carefully included slippage between
angle related to mill filling (0). layers of balls by expressing lVr as a function of radial
The charge inside the mill expands and contracts as the position. The nl0del can also take care of charge constituted
mill revolves. Hence, the center of gravity also keeps by nlaterials of different densities. as is the case in semi-
changing position. Moreover, the angular speed of the nlill autogeneous mill. All these advanced features nlade the
and mass of balls within the mill influence the profile of the model quite comprehensive. However. the toe and shoulder
positions of industrial mill are calculated fronl the sanle
correlation obtained from a laboratory nlill and that is not
quite acceptable. The reason is that the intensity of force at
Table 1.. Power draw formulae
the ball-ball and ball-wall interface will not be same for t\\'O
Bond [2] different mills. Nevertheless. despite its simplified approach
P = 12.26pLD2.3J(l - 0.937J)(1 - 0.1/29-109) the nl0del claims a greater degree of accuracy than the
Hogg and Fuerstenau [3] previous empirical models.
P = 3.627 p¢LD2.5 sin3@ sin 'Y. In this study. a new nlethod of estimating power draw is
Guerrero and Arbiter [4]
shown. The mill is simulated with a computer code.
P = 3.627 p¢LD2.5jeJ)
Harris et at. [5] developed on the basis of discrete element method (DEI\1).
P = 9.69p¢LD2.5 J(l - J) The strength of this method is its fundamental approach.
Harris et at. [5] robustness and lack of any enlpiricisnl. The verification of
P = 1.88mg¢Do.5(l - J) sin 'Y.
this technique, followed by a sumnHuy of results showing the
Moys [6]
P = KD2.3 sin 'Y.pLJ(1 - {3J)N effects of various design and operating conditions on mill
power. is presented here.
A. DATTA et al. : ANALYSIS OF POWER DRAW IN BALL MILLS BY THE DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD 135
THE NUMERICAL METHOD the same scheme for all the elements gives the ball charge
motion in one-time steps. The integration of acceleration is
The numerical method that has been adopted here is called carried out by finite difference approximation. Therefore, in
Discrete Element Method (DEM). The original technique order to maintain computational stability, a very small
was pioneered by Cundall and Strack in 1979 [10] for time step, generally in the order of 10-5 s, is used. The
simulating discrete, but interacting bodies. Therefore, the simplicity of the method is quite tangible. DEM applies
discrete element method is a suitable choice for modeling the Newton's second law of motion to compute the acceleration
internal dynamics of ball mill, where balls and the mill shell of a moving body from the net force applied on it and the
are treated as geometrically inviolate elements [11]. force is calculated from the physical properties of the
The discrete element analysis starts with a mathematical material.
representation of the entities. Ideally the system should be A computation of the mill power draft can be easily
simulated in three dimensions. But, in the case of ball mill obtained from the simulation of ball charge motion. The
one can assume that the axial motion in either direction is power supplied to the mill is expended to keep the ball
minimal so it can be simulated in two dimensions, where the charge in motion. While doing this work, energy is also
mill is considered to be made up of several circular expended in friction and collisions. At each collision, a part
compartments containing one layer of balls-and one of of the total energy is lost, which is mimicked by the dashpot.
these compartments is the system of our interest. In that Thus, the product of normal and shear force on the dashpot
way, the computational complexity is reduced to a great and respective displacement give the energy lost at that
extent. In two dimensions, a ball is visualized as a circle or contact. The energy lost in two-dimensional calculation is
disc that has the mass of a sphere of same diameter, whereas expressed in the following way:
the mill wall is represented by straight lines. Each of these
discs and lines are treated as separate elements. Another
important aspect of DEM simulation is the modeling of the E = L L [(Fn . vn~t) + (Fs . vs~t)] (6)
contact points between two elements. Here, the contacts are t k
Mill diameter (m) x length (m) Mill filling (%) Mill speed (% critical) Measured power (k\V) Predicted powcr (k\V) Referencc
4 4
10 10
Ball Load = 35% =
Ball Load 35%
Mill Speed = 60% Critical =
Mill Speed 70% Critical
i
--l
3
10
~
~
~
0 ~
~ ~ 10
3
S
~ ~
10
2 Slope =2.53 • Slope = 2.24
•
101 102
0.1 10
Mill Diameter (m) Mill Diameter (m)
Fig. 2. Variation of mill power with diameter (laboratory scale mill) Fig. 3. Variation of mill power with diameter (industrial mill) and
and slope of best-fit straight line in log-scale. slope of best-fit straight line in log-scale.
operating factors. DEM numerical calculation takes into the same 0.762-m (30 in) mill with 35% ball load shows that
consideration the exact shape of internal geometry as well as this maximum point is about 85-90% critical speed (Fig. 6).
the size distribution of balls and mill speed. The mill power The motion of the ball charge becomes more cataracting as
draft is calculated from the numerous collisions that take the mill speed increases and so the mill draws more power.
place as a result of mill rotation. In Fig. 4 DEM was used to But as the mill speed approaches the critical value more
analyze the effect of ball load on mill power draft. Likewise, number of balls start to stick on the mill shell, the effective
DEM could be used to examine the effect of size distribution ball mass reduces and thus, the mill tends to draw less
of the ball charge on mill power draft. The internal dynamics power. In this context, one should realize that the peak of
of the balls are dependent on the ball size and the lifter the curve would depend upon friction between mill shell and
geometry given a particular mill speed and mill filling. When grinding media. For instance, slight variation in the percent
the charge comprised small balls the lifters can enhance the solids of the slurry in the mill changes the frictional
cataracting action, but the energy involved in the impacts characteristics of the ball mass. Figure 6 shows the decrease
would be low due to the small mass of the balls. On the
other hand, if the balls are much larger in size compared to
the height of the lifters then they just roll over the lifters 1350
restricting the degree of cataracting action and thus the mill Diameter = 0.762 cm
draws less power. Therefore for a particular mill speed, ball 1300 Speed = 60% Critical
•
load and lifter geometry, there is an optimum size of ball •
charge which draws the maximum power. The same
1250
•
phenomenon is depicted in Fig. 5. In this case the 0.762-m •
diameter mill is simulated with equilibrium ball charge
•
~
distribution with three different top sizes of ball. The lifters ~ 1200
~
are of rectangular shape with a height of 6.35 mm and width ~
of 101.6 mm. For the top size of 5.1 cm, the mill draws ~0
1150
maximum power as compared to the other two sizes (3.8 cm ~
•
and 6.4 cm). The inherent nature of the DEM numerical
technique allows us to analyze the influence of any operating
1100 •
condition on mill power draft from the resulting impacts
caused by them. The other mill operating conditions namely 1050
2000 1800
-+- friction coeff = 0.6
-0-- friction coeff = 0.2
1600
'i?
(';j
1500
~
'-<
Q)
~0
p.,.
= ~
~ 1200
1000
500 800
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
Fig. 6. Variation of mill power with mill speed and coefficient of fric-
Fig. 5. Variation of mill power with ball charge distribution.
tion.
Two successive lifters lock-up the ball mass and raise them ~
to a height thus working against gravity. The presence of 1200 A
1400 II
1050 1300
1200 II
...o
~ 1000
~ 1100
Mill Diameter = 0.762 cm I
Mill Dia. = 76.2 cm 1000 Mill Speed =
60% Critical
900 L---L.--I.._l..-.--..l----l..._l..----I.--J.._.l.---'-----'-_L..----'----'
o 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Number of Lifters
Fig. 9. Variation of mill power with shape of lifter.
Fig. 8. Variation of mill power with number of lifters.
CONCLUSION