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Resumen
En la actualidad los métodos tradicionales para la selección del tamaño óptimo de bola
en la molienda convencional no pueden ser usados para aplicaciones de molienda SAG
debido a que son modelos empíricos construidos en base a datos industriales de
operaciones con molinos convencionales. El trabajo desarrollado presenta una
propuesta alternativa para determinar el óptimo tamaño de bolas en la molienda SAG
basado en el espectro de energías sobre el tamaño de partícula, el cual es obtenido
mediante simulaciones con métodos de elementos discretos (DEM).
Abstract
To date, the traditional methods used to select an optimal size of ball in conventional mill
cannot be applied for SAG mill applications since they are empiric models built based on
industrial data of operations with conventional mills. The work developed presents an
alternative proposal to determine the optimal size of balls in SAG mill based on the power
spectrum of the particle size, which is obtained by simulations with discrete element
methods (DEM).
The power spectrum obtained shows the power behavior to be applied to fracture the
mineral using different sizes of ball, and each fraction of mineral particle fed to the mill.
The power spectrum shows two zones, the no-breaking zone that describes all the
collisions within the mill generating energy below the specific energy consumption (kWh/t)
so, they do not cause fractures; while the breaking zone represents all collisions with
energies equal or greater than the specific energy consumption, breaking the mineral
particles.
In addition, this technical work shows the implementation analysis of change of ball size
from 5.0” to 5.5” through an industrial application of SAG grinding. Results obtained
showed that using a larger grinding media compensates the change of hardness and
particle size of the processed mineral, thus avoiding reducing the treatment capacity,
furthermore, a less consumption of grinding media by up to 12% was demonstrated.