Chapter 12 Comminution Energy and Evaluation in Fine Grinding

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter highlights comminution energy and evaluation in fine grinding. The purposes for comminution are to liberate minerals for concentration processes, to reduce the size, to increase the surface area, and to free the useful materials from their matrices. Comminution is an old mechanical unit operation for size reduction of solid materials and an important operation in the field of mineral processing, the ceramic industry, the electronics industry and so on. The energy efficiency of comminution is very low and the energy required for comminution increases with a decrease in feed or produced particle size. Research and development to find energy saving and the energy required in comminution processes have been performed. In design, operation and control of comminution processes, it is necessary to evaluate the comminution energy of solid materials. In general, the comminution energy (i.e., the size reduction energy) is expressed as a function of the particle size of feed and product. In addition, the chapter also presented various Laws of comminution energy including Rittinger's law Kick's law Bond's law, and Holmes's law.