REPLACEMENT OF WET BALL MILLING WITH HIGH-PRESSURE GRINDING AHEAD OF MINERAL SEPARATION

REPLACEMENT OF WET BALL MILLING WITH HIGH-PRESSURE GRINDING AHEAD OF MINERAL SEPARATION

C. Gagnon1, A. Rosa1, S. Makni1, and *R. McIvor1
B. Klein2, A. Kumar2, F. Wang2, D. Gong2, and C. Saud2

1COREM
1180 rue de la Minéralogie
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada G1N 1X7
(*Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

2University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4

ABSTRACT
In response to the Natural Resources Canada “Crush It Challenge”, Corem partnered with the University of British Columbia and led a project to develop and demonstrate the use of high-pressure grinding to replace the workhorse of the industry, wet ball milling, with high-pressure grinding. Two plant case studies, a small tonnage gold recovery operation, and a large tonnage copper recovery operation, were carried out. Plant circuit performances were compared to pilot plants operated on the same circuit feed set up to represent the novel equipment and flowsheet that was developed to produce separation circuit feed. Numerous obstacles to industrial implementation of high-pressure grinding in this role which were recognized at the outset of the work were successfully addressed. In both cases, comminution equipment energy savings alone, and final stage total circuit energy savings, exceeded 60% and 50%, respectively. Downstream mineral separation performance was the same or better.

KEYWORDS
High-pressure fine grinding, mineral separation feed preparation