Ball mill energy efficiency optimization techniques: A review

Abstract

Ball mills are essential machinery in the mining industry, thermal power-producing companies, and cement manufacturing companies, for grinding different ores, grinding coal into pulverized coal, and processing cement clinkers into fine powder cement or pulp. Their design operational and energy inefficiencies are because of drivetrain inefficiencies, output load rerun, lifter face angle configuration, and poor load classifiers, with energy inefficiency topping the list of inefficiencies. These inefficiencies bring about lower production rates and huge energy costs aggravating lower profit margins. Notably, out of the total energy consumed by a ball mill, only 1% is used productively for grinding purposes while the bulk, over 80% of the energy is wasted in heat generation and carried away by the slurry or dissipated into the atmosphere. Numerous design innovations have been done on ball mills but these inefficiencies still persist, hence the need to further design an energy-efficient ball mill for industrial use. This review sought to outline and discuss the ball mill energy efficiency optimization methods which had been very limitedly explored by most researchers. There is a need to determine the ball mill energy waste by carrying out practical experiments and simulations using CFDDEM analysis.