INTEGRATED PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION OF COMMINUTION CIRCUITS

PROF MALCOLM POWELL

JKMRC, Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland

Malcolm.powell@uq.edu.au

ABSTRACT

The production of metals and raw materials underpins the development of mankind and is of ever-
increasing importance in supporting our increasing standard of living world-wide. The mining industry has
looked after its own affairs in terms of technology, cost, energy and waste for many centuries. However,
recently society has placed increasing expectations on us to enhance the quality of life – especially of
those directly impacted by mining. The ‘licence to operate’ pressure on mining companies has
dramatically changed mining practice over the past 20 years and will continue to do so. What mining
companies need to prepare themselves for, in addition to direct social pressure, is supply-chain pressure
to provide ‘clean’ metals as input to manufacturing processes. The high footprint of mining carries forward
into the consumer products, that now demand a ‘greener’ profile in terms of environmental impact. The
manufacturers of these goods will drive the mining industry to dramatically lower our energy and CO2
footprint in the coming years, and rapidly to meet demand. Those mining companies who can meet these
targets in the next 5 years, are likely to rise up as the leaders in mining.

Keywords: Energy, sustainability, Licence to operate

INTRODUCTION

The production of metals underpins the development of mankind and is of ever-increasing importance in
supporting our increasing standard of living world-wide. The mining industry has looked after its own
affairs in terms of technology, cost, energy and waste for many centuries. However, recently society has
placed increasing expectations on us to enhance the quality of life – especially of those directly impacted
by mining. The ‘licence to operate’ pressure on mining companies has dramatically changed mining
practice over the past 20 years and will continue to do so. What mining companies need to prepare
themselves for, in addition to direct social pressure, is supply-chain pressure to provide ‘clean’ metals as
input to manufacturing processes. A key aspect of this is energy and CO2 footprint. The high footprint of
mining carries forward into the consumer products, that now demand a ‘greener’ profile in terms of
environmental impact.

The reality of drivers

However, ‘green’ Governments, society and industry aim to be, all potential improved technology still
requires considerable mineral resources to manufacture and operate. Shifting from oil and coal-based
energy for powering our transport and providing electricity are major targets in CO2 reduction. Renewable
energy sources require massive infrastructure for converting solar and physical energy (wind, water,
waves) to electrical energy. All electrical energy production requires motors with kilometres of copper
wiring. Wind generator towers have blades in excess of 70 m in diameter, requiring considerable steel
structures and specialist steel blades supported by concrete foundations. The photovoltaic panels of solar
arrays are packed with high-purity metals and silicon. Hydroelectricity requires huge concrete structures,
piping and generators and the dams are not eco-friendly as they destroy ecological environments through
flooding hundreds of hectares of valleys and destabilising river systems. This power then needs to be
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transmitted to the users via transmission lines consisting of copper and aluminium cables hundreds of
kilometres long supported by steel pylons.

Using renewable energy necessitates the installation of storage facilities to buffer production and the
cyclic loading of power usage. Storage of energy on the massive scale demanded by our economies has
proven to be difficult, expensive and have a high footprint. Pumped-storage hydropower is efficient,
provides huge capacity that is almost instantaneous to switch on, but does require expensive dams and
their environmental drawbacks. Super-heated salts provide heat storage to run conventional power
plants, but are markedly dangerous and need to be kept well isolated from society and the environment.
Battery storage is the most convenient, portable and flexible storage. Battery science has rapidly
advanced to high-density energy storage, making them viable even for vehicles. Battery arrays are being
trialled on full city power supply, e.g. the Tesla array in South Australia. Batteries appear to be the only
viable source of portable electrical energy, so are essential for electric cars, phones, power tools, public
transport (off fixed electrified grids).

Moving from hydrocarbon fuels to electrical energy for vehicles requires hundred-fold increase in battery
production and an additional electrical generation and transmission capacity of around 50%. The world
does not have the current supply chain to provide the metals required for battery production to meet
targets for conversion to electrical cars in the next 20 years in Europe alone.

The reality of this path forward to a greener world is that a great deal more mineral, cement, aggregate
resources are needed than currently to build and support the generation, supply and storage of energy.

Energy use in mining

A major contributing factor to environmental impact, CO2 production, Social impact, and under-utilisation
of mineral reserves is the considerable energy consumption required by the mining industry. If we can
slash the energy use we can move a long way to satisfying the call for ‘greener’ minerals and raw materials
and improving our social licence to operate. The companies that achieve this will be the future leaders in
the industry.

The following key data, obtained from high-quality analysis of energy consumption from the ground up
by Ballantyne and Powell (2014a,b) provides a high-level summary of the significance of energy
consumption in mining:
• World electrical power consumed by comminution approximately 2.2 %
• Comminution fraction of mining energy is 35% ± 7
• The embodied energy (energy in manufacture) in grinding balls adds about a further 30%

When this is broken down to use on the mine site, the following average split of energy is derived, as
illustrated in Figure 1. The comminution energy use is dominated by mills. This is because mills provide
fine grinding, and fine grinding (below 1 mm) requires 90% of the total energy.

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 Figure 1. Distribution of comminution energy in mineral ore comminution

Energy consumption is highly sensitive to ore competence, final product size and amount of rock to be
processed. The work of Ballantyne and Powell (2014b) extended in the CEEC energy curves study, has
collected 2000 datasets, from 175 mines, using 120 PJ/year (1.9 Bt/y) of comminution energy, to produce
energy curves across a number of mineral commodities. The most recent data set is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Energy curve distribution (Ballantyne, 2019)

This and the accompanying curves account for the following prime factors:
• Ore Hardness
• Circuit Efficiency
• Grind Size
• Ore Grade and Recovery
• Energy Price
• Ancillary Equipment
• Embodied Energy

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It can be seen that there is a four-fold range of energy use across the industry, dependent on ore type,
commodity, ore competence, fineness of grind, and lastly circuit and equipment efficiency.

How to tackle energy consumption in the industry forms the core content of this paper, while
acknowledging there are many other areas to address, it is proposed that energy consumption is at the
heart of dramatically changing our industry.

THE BIG PICTURE

As discussed by Powell (2017), Comminution for mineral processing is an integral and essential part of a
process designed to extract valuable minerals from the host rock in which they reside. As such the design
of any comminution process design should be assessed against primary purpose, rather than a size
reduction target.

The valuable minerals upon which our industrialised society depends have been formed and or laid down
in host rock from which they need to be extracted. The minerals are embedded and dispersed in many
forms and structures, presenting a wide range of requirements for their recovery from different ore
bodies. Bulk minerals (such as iron ore and coal) that require little or no comminution will not be
considered in this paper. However, it should be noted that iron ore resources are already moving to finer
grained deposits that do require considerable processing to a pelletising size of sub 40 µm. The costs of
the massive amount of rock breakage and processing required to recover the minerals is driving our
industry into economic unviability. Although the cement industry is not explicitly addressed in this paper,
a number of the drivers are the same. The major difference is that mineralogy does not drive grind size,
this is dictated by the required physical properties of the ground lime and clinker product. Thus only the
comminution processing efficiency aspects will apply to cement production.

As a comminution community we are all too aware of the energy and associated processing costs of
comminution. Many figures of efficiency of the comminution process are bandied about, down to as low
as a fraction of a percent, but this author takes a pragmatic view of what can be achieved through realistic
mechanical processes. Low energy impact that is just sufficient to break particles is a good benchmark of
the ideal limit against which to benchmark our processes and set realist goals. Such characterisation
indicates that our current industrial processes are in the region of 30% to 40% efficient. These figures
indicate likely achievable improvements in industrial comminution processes at equivalent grind size. As
it is highly improbable that we can exceed 70% efficiency in real processes treating hundreds to thousands
of tonnes per hour, we might target halving the input energy to achieve the same size reduction as an
absolute limit to what is practically achievable through equipment improvement. However, the often
overlooked aspect of excessive production of fine product, not required for mineral recovery or the
required downstream physical application such as in cement, can contribute as much opportunity again
for energy reduction.

With the well-publicised drop in ore grades, such as by Mudd (2009), deeper ore bodies and more complex
and finer grained deposits being exploited as the high grade deposits are depleted, even halving the
energy consumption per tonne of rock will leave the industry with an increase in energy consumption per
tonne of product. Thus, equipment processing improvement alone cannot reduce processing costs and
the energy impost of our industry.

We need a different approach to tackle this significant issue to our industry. Herein I propose that this
requires a re-definition of our purpose, considering that comminution is an integral step in an overall
process of mineral recovery:

The purpose of comminution in mineral processing is to sufficiently release the valuable minerals to
allow their economic recovery.
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 IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ROCK

The in-situ mineral association determines the degree of size reduction, and thus comminution, that is
required to enable recovery of the valuables. The required size is a function of:
• Mineral grain size –smaller grain size requires finer grinding to expose the mineral
• Mineral associations – the adjacent or surrounding minerals affect recovery processes
• Texture – intergrowth, veining, etc.
• Mechanical texture – the energy required and optimal input mechanism are driven by the particle
strength and propensity to release the valuable minerals (Bourgeois et al, 2014)
• Recovery process or processes – depending upon whether these are surface, volume, porosity
dependent and how strongly selective they are determines to what degree the host rock needs
to be reduced in order to allow a high probability of recovery.

It is proposed that these criteria (and likely more) should determine the route and degree of size reduction
applied to an ore. This provides the criteria against which the purpose can be addressed.

THE COMMINUTION OBJECTIVE REVISITED

When considered in terms of the energy and processing cost and the mineral processing objective of
releasing the minerals for recovery the comminution objective can be defined as:

The objective of industrial comminution processes is to conduct the minimum degree of breakage
required to permit recovery of the valuable minerals or satisfy product quality needs.

Based on the reviewing the mineral structure of the ore, and considering that for base and precious metals
the valuable minerals represent parts per million up to a fraction of a percent of the ore, the target should
be to remove unwanted gangue material as early as possible. The optimal processing route then becomes
staged processing that allows early and progressive removal of gangue so as to upgrade, and thus
minimise, the material to be further processed. Recovery of the values then is the last stage and objective.
This approach provides the link to integrated processing. The implications on processing are summarised
in Table 1. This presents each stage of processing, the condition of the rock in that stage, how it is currently
processed and how we future integrated processes may perform. This presents a thought-provoker that
may form a framework for better structuring and advocating staged upgrade.

An example of how progressive upgrade may affect total energy usage is provided in Table 2. Due to the
highly non-linear energy requirements of size reduction, as well explained by Hukki in his exponential
energy curve, the vast majority of energy is used from 1 mm downwards. The rough energy split to reduce
down to each size is shown in column 2 of the table.

The influence of when the barren gangue is removed is small on total energy consumption, until below
0.5 mm. however, the impact on recovery is different at each stage of upgrade. The recovery when
upgrading RoM ore is lower and far less predictable than when upgrading sub-1 mm particles. This is due
to better defined liberation profiles and thus higher selectivity of particles with or without grade as the
particles become smaller. Thus recovery when removing 40% of RoM feed through screening may be 80%,
but be 98% for 75 – 500 µm particles. There is thus a considerable advantage to upgrading later in the
process, but then more energy is required in breakage. The last example in the table provides a
progressive upgrade. This is conservative per step, allowing higher recoveries through only applying when
the probability of accurate separation is high. Thus when screening out only 10% of RoM feed, the
recoveries may be almost 100%, as only the definitely barren rock is rejected. The same principle applies
throughout the size range, allowing a far higher total gangue rejection prior to final fine grinding and thus
by far the largest impact on total grinding energy.
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 Table 1 conventional and staged upgrade processing steps
Stage condition Current process Future integrated process
Rock in situ – Natural disseminated Measure and map grade to Measure the mineral associations
the ore body state of values in host plan mine. Apply analytic while the rock is still in situ.
rock Geomet modelling to Map these back into the ore-body
distribute processing based on geological structure.
properties into block model
Mining Bulk removal of host Provide access to the zones Planning of extraction according
rock from the ground with the values and extract to physical constraints and
in a form suitable for processing needs. Selection of
transport mining method as a first stage of
processing – grade selection,
fineness of fragmentation, etc. to
suit immediate processing.
Transport Fragmented after Move rock to processing Second stage of processing - such
blasting, cutting or destination or waste pile as in-pit conveying to different
block caving destinations for waste, high
grade, low grade, leach, etc.
Comminution Run of mine (RoM) Reduce all feed to a fixed Break rock particles just
fragmentation target product size based sufficiently for the next stage of
on F80 to achieve liberation upgrade
Classification Comminuted size Select particles that meet Efficiently select particles, based
distribution the P80 criteria to be on size, that are too coarse for
passed on to the recovery recovery and recycle for further
process, principally with comminution.

Repeat 2 to 3 times
hydrocyclones – leading to
differential product size
distributions according to
the density of the particles
Recovery Particles in a range of Pass all material through a Reject particles that are gangue
degrees of liberation fixed process for a target
and mineral average recovery and grade
association of a concentrate
Staged Particles with an Send to the next stage of
recovery increased mineral comminution.
grade and different Final stage targets recovery and
properties feed RoM grade.
Waste Particles that were Pump to a tailings dam Choose the waste storage
disposal not selected for the destination according to size,
final concentrate AFM, toxic or benign, remaining
grade, potential future ore body
Water Process water loaded Thicken tailings to recover Recover 99% water from the
recycle with slimes about 50% of the water. early upgrade stages, final tailings
Through settling on the (with lower slimes) target >80%
tailings dam recover about water recovery through
20% of the water that was thickening, minimum water
pumped to tailings. Total pumped to tailings dam. Fresh
fresh water need about water < 5% of process water.
30% of plant process water.

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 Table 2 Influence of removal of waste ore at different staged of the size reduction process

size, mm energy, % remove per step, %

RoM 0.1% 40% 10%
10 1% 40% 10%
1 9% 40% 20%
0.5 20% 40% 20%
0.075 70% 40% 10%
net energy, % 100% 60.0% 60.0% 60.4% 64.0% 72.0% 35.3%

The calculation of actual figures are not straightforward as the relationships between ore mineralogical
structure and recovery per stage are required. This has been tackled to various degrees in projects at the
JKMRC and with collaborators, but is yet to be compiled into comprehensive upgrade circuit options as
no ore data set is complete.

Based on existing data a consistent and realistic upgrade curve has been compiled (Ballantyne, 2016), as
illustrated in Figure 3. This provides a smoothed mathematical description of the mass recovery for a
range of sizes for a target metal recovery, i.e. the ore upgrade or removal of mass. For this data, to recover
95% of the metal from the run-of-mine (ROM) ore, 80% of the mass would need to be recovered on
average. For the material crushed to sub-1mm, only 15% of the ore mass needs to be recovered to recover
95% of the metal. Clearly this will change according to ore type and process, but can be fitted to testwork
for particular ores and recovery processes.

Figure 3 Recovery by size based on a range of industrial recovery data (Ballantyne (2016)

Developing improved models of these upgrade curves is to be tackled in ongoing work, which will
hopefully attract interest and support from companies driven to slash processing and energy costs.

Combining the energy usage figures with metal recovery model, provides a method to calculate the overall
relationship between energy used and total potential metal recovery. For removal of 40% of the treated
rock mass at different sizes, outcomes are presented in Figure 4. All the figures are relative to the standard
process of milling the full feed to final size and the associated floatation recovery, both energy and
recovery for the base case being 100% in these relative figures. It can be seen that reduction of potential
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recovery to below 95% will reduce energy consumption to 60% of current when conducted at coarse sizes.
The energy saved reduces as the 40% mass removal is conducted at finer sizes, with 70% energy usage at
0.1 mm upgrade size, but this provides a far superior 98% to 99% recovery. Thus there is a strong trade-
off of recovery with upgrade size.

Gangue removal impact on energy & recovery

One stage of 40% at a size
80% 100%

60%

40% 95%

Recovery
Energy

20%

0% 90%
0.1 1 10 100

size, mm

Figure 4 Relationship between metal recovery and energy usage for 40% mass removal at different sizes

Figure 5 shows the outcome for progressive upgrade stages, as presented in Table 2. Unlike in Figure 4,
the figures are cumulative as the upgrade is in progressive stages. This illustrates the advantage of
removing a small amount of mass at multiple stages along the processing route, with only 33% energy
usage providing 96% potential recovery – representing a massive and economically viable saving in
processing costs.

Figure 5 Cumulative recovery and energy usage for progressive upgrade

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 ORE CHARACTERISATION

At the heart of process integration is characterising the ore properties. In contrast to current practice this
should not be isolated characterisation per process unit, but a set of properties that are rock properties
and thus are conserved along the processing chain, so are not processing route dependent. Currently,
mapping of rock properties can have figures such as tonnes per hour through a SAG mill, but this is not a
rock property, it is a processing property that is dependent on the particular process and its efficiency at
the time of calibration. I call the properties we should measure the primary rock properties. While still in
solid phase the rock does not change properties it just becomes smaller bits of the original host rock.

The concept of carrying primary rock properties along the full process chain is illustrated in Figure 6. The
primary properties are measured for in-situ rock and mapped back into the ore body. This information is
then carried along the process chain calculating processing properties at every stage as required. The
common rock language can then be used to communicate along the process chain and into the final
products, including waste and water recovery.

Figure 6 Illustration of integrated process knowledge

PRIMARY ROCK PROPERTIES

This approach to ore characterisation requires a break-away from conventional correlations of

performance to measured properties. Primary rock properties include:
• Mineral abundance,
• mineral association,
• mineral strengths,
• rock strengths in these mineral associations.

From these primary properties the processing properties, such as SAG mill throughput, ball mill grind size,
crusher throughput, HPGR throughput and product size, can be calculated. Furthermore, by utilising multi-
component comminution models the response of the different processing equipment to blends of ore
from different parts of a pit can be predicted. The AMIRA P9Q project it producing commercial level multi-
component simulation models based on many years of research in the P9 research project. The GCC
members have each contributed different models to this unique comprehensive simulation capability.
The Integrated extraction simulator is being developed by the CRC ORE in collaboration with the AMIRA
P9 project to provide a simulation platform upon which such simulations can be based in the future.
The JKMRC has begun to explore the use of primary properties in relating rock strength to alteration of
porphyry copper ores (Yildrim, 2016). In this work the breakage strength of the dominant alteration type
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in the pit was found to be linearly dependent on the degree of alteration, named the process alteration
index (Yildrim, 2014). This is shown in Figure 7. The E50 is the average energy to break a given type of rock
(Tavares, 2007). The next step in development is utilising these primary properties in the standard
comminution models.

Measuring particle strength and strength distribution for the dominant range of minerals and mineral
associations is the key to the comminution primary properties. This is in contrast to batch grinding and
average ore property tests. Tools such as MLA and 3D X-ray tomography linked to automated core
scanning hold promise to allow mineral association information to be mapped back into the ore body
through rapid and inexpensive measurement techniques.

Figure 7 Strength of a Porphyry copper ore as a function alteration in terms of Plagioclaise replacement

CONTRIBUTION OF THE GCC

The Global Comminution Collaborative (GCC) research group is comprised of the comminution research
groups from:
• JKMRC, Sustainable Minerals Institute – University of Queensland, Australia,
• Centre for Minerals Research (CMR), Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town,
South Africa,
• LTM (Laboratory of mineral Technology), Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering,
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, COPPE-UFRJ, Brazil,
• Dept. of Mining Engineering, Mineral Processing Division, Hacettepe University, Turkey
• Chalmers Rock Processing Research, Product and Production Development, Chalmers University
of Technology, Sweden,
• Institute for Particle Technology, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany.

These institutes provide a global reach and cover the comminution process chain from crushing, SAG and
ball milling, HPGR, classification, to fine grinding. Rock breakage characterisation and modelling are
provided over this entire range. The objective in terms of integrated processing is to draw these
independent capabilities into a continuous modelling and prediction capability that will support the
objective of coherent simulation across the entire processing chain.

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 DISCUSSION

In order to shift our paradigm of processing impact on energy and environment it is proposed that an
integrated approach to processing is required, that allows multi-stages of progressive upgrade to be
designed and linked into a usable circuit. This will allow flexible processing that can respond to the natural
variation in the ore over time. The processes required for this approach are outlined, to indicate the
feasibility of this. The JKMRC and GCC collaborators have built many of the base tools for such an
integrated processing approach. They are applying current integrated knowledge capability to process
improvement and are launching the development of integrated process knowledge as a comprehensive
research thrust aimed at providing a significant decrease in energy utilisation of the mining industry.

This improved processing efficiency will in turn significantly slash energy use, with figures of 50% being
viable, so as to address the drivers of our users in providing metals and raw materials that satisfy the need
for ‘green’ production, especially in terms of energy use and CO2 production. Although this has been the
focus of the paper, reduced energy and size of processing equipment, will allow the industry to rethink
processing routes. Reduction in degree of grinding and avoidance of over-grinding will minimise
production of unnecessary fines which will massively improve water recovery and reuse – thus slashing
water usage and the size of tailing dams, potentially by up to 50% - a huge benefit to society. Improved
efficiency will in turn allow us to more fully utilise ore deposits, and thus not squander our natural
resources by only partially utilising large orebodies that are already being processed.

In summary, applying known technical solutions in a coherent manner to the mining process will enable
us to satisfy the drivers that will force the industry to slash processing energy.

REFERENCES

Ballantyne, G.R. and Powell, M.S., 2014a. Benchmarking comminution energy consumption for the
processing of copper and gold ores. Minerals Engineering vol.65, pp.109–114
Ballantyne, G.R. and Powell, M.S., 2014b. Benchmarking comminution energy consumption for
improved efficiency. Proceedings 12th AusIMM Mill Operators’ Conference 2014, Townsville, Australia.
Ballantyne, G.R. (2019). CEEC energy curves, www.ceecthefuture.org
Ballantyne, G.R. 2016, private communication, 29 September, JKMRC, university of Queensland.
Mudd, G M, 2009. The sustainability of mining in Australia: key production trends and their
environmental implications for the future, Research report RR5, Department of Civil Engineering, Monash
University and Mineral Policy Institute, Revised – April 2009.
Powell, M.S., 2017, Comminution modelling in the context of integrated process prediction.
Proceedings Comminution 17, Cape Town, South Africa, Minerals Engineering International.
Tavares, L.M., 2007. Breakage of Single Particles: Quasi-Static. Handbook of Powder Technology,
Volume 12. ISSN 0167-3785 DOI: 10.1016/S0167-3785(07)12004-2
Yildrim, B.G. 2016. Development of a correlation between mineralogy, rock strength measures, and
breakage of Copper Porphyries. Thesis submitted in fulfilment of PhD, University of Queensland, April
2016.
Yildirim, B.G., Bradshaw, D., Powell, M.S. Evans, C. and Clark, A. 2014. Development of an effective
and practical Process Alteration Index (PAI) for predicting metallurgical responses of Cu porphyries.
Minerals Engineering vol. 69, pp. 91–96.

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