G R BALLANTYNE
Comminution ’18, April 16-19 2018, Cape Town, South Africa
Australia
ABSTRACT
Comminution Energy Curves are a resource developed at the JKMRC and made available by CEEC to the mining industry to compare and benchmark comminution energy intensity at mine sites.
However, the trade-off decisions of companies are not typically based purely on reducing energy consumption, but also on reducing costs. For this reason, a specific energy cost curve has been added to the suite of comminution energy curves.
Electricity prices vary by an order of magnitude both locally, nationally and internationally; precise details of which are typically commercially sensitive. Therefore, to estimate the distribution of costs associated with comminution energy consumption, an appropriate model was developed to assign variable electricity prices dependent on the country and the local power generation assets.
This paper focuses on the effectiveness of including the electricity price variability in the energy curves by displaying the results from a specific case study where two mines investigated the trade-off between HPGR and SAG milling.
AUTHOR DETAILS
Ballantyne, G.R. - The University of Queensland, Sustainable Minerals Institute, Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre, University of Queensland, 40 Isles Rd, Brisbane Qld 4068. Email:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CEEC acknowledges and thanks Mineral Engineering International (MEI) for organising the Comminution ’18 Conference.
The conference proceedings USB is available for £95 by emailing