COMMINUTION OF DIFFERENT GRANITE SAMPLES OF SOUTH EAST DESSERT OF EGYPT

Abstract

Granite is commonly and widely occurring type of intrusive felsic igneous rock. Granite particles, obtained from comminution and concentration processes, may be used for many industrial applications. For example, granite chippings and cullet are mixing with the red mud to produce glass-ceramics materials via melting and crystallization [1]. Granites with suitable lithium grades are added to the glass and ceramics industries [2]. Feldspar in granite rock is largely used as raw material in the ceramic and glass industry [3]. The aim of current work is to study and compare the comminution characteristics of different granite samples obtained from South Eastern desert of Egypt. The samples under study were classified according to their compositions as different types of granite, i.e. diorite, tonalite, monzogranite and granodiorite. The main constituents of samples are plagioclase, quartz, and orthoclase. The results assure that tonalite has the highest ability of comminution while monzogranite has the lowest compared with other samples. The percent of quartz has no effect on the comminution of tonalite and monzogranite. Crushing and grinding processes increased from monzogranite through granodiorite, diorite to tonalite as the plagioclase percent increased. The percent of quartz has a significant effect on the crushing of diorite and granodiorite. Although the difference in quartz percent did not exceed 12.3%, the difference in their values of x50 reached to 278.6 μm (36.1%). The difference was about 354.6 μm (31.6%) between their values of MPSD. The percent of quartz has no significant effect on the grinding of these two materials. Although the difference in quartz percent reached to 12.3%, the difference in their values of x50 did not exceed 4.6 μm (2.1%). The difference between their values of MPSD was about 16.5 μm (5.0%). The results revealed also that the percent of quartz has no significant effect on the grinding of all materials understudy. The comminution of different studied granites decreased with increasing the compressive strength and decreasing the abrasion