Comparison of open and closed circuit HPGR application on dry grinding circuit performance

Abstract

A conventional cement grinding circuit is composed of a two compartment tube mill, a mill filter which collects the fine material inside the mill and a dynamic air separator where final product with required fineness is collected. In general the material fed to the circuit has a top size of 50 mm which is very coarse for the ball mill. For this purpose, later in 1980s, high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) has found applications as a pregrinder which increased throughput of the grinding circuit at the same fineness. In early applications, HPGR was operated in open circuit. But later as the operating principle of the equipment based on the compression, some portion of the HPGR discharge recycled back to improve efficiency of the mill or operated closed circuit with classifiers. Within this study effect of open and closed circuit HPGR applications on dry grinding circuit performance was examined. For this purpose sampling studies around three different cement grinding circuit were completed. In the first study, a circuit including open circuit HPGR, ball mill and air separator was sampled and chosen as the basic condition. As the final product size distribution is important for grinding circuit, model structure of each equipment was developed. The second and third surveys were carried out around closed circuit HPGR operation with V and VSK separator to develop models for the separators. Finally the separator models were used in basic condition to simulate closed circuit HPGR application. It was understood from the studies that closed circuit HPGR operation improved the overall circuit efficiency at the same final product fineness by reducing the specific energy consumption.