Effect of Grinding Aids in Cement Grinding

Abstract

In fine grinding of cement in a ball mill, it is sometimes impractical to grind finer in a dry state. Even though the chemical reactivity requires the material to be dry ground, it is sometimes necessary to use different breakage machines to obtain the product, but it is usually more expensive, requires more energy and reduces capacity. The economic alternative is to use a grinding aid. Grinding aid or grinding additives refer to substances which when mixed into the mill contents cause an increase in rate of size reduction and flowability. Grinding process of clinker was carried on with a laboratory scale ball mill by varying different type of grinding additives and dosage while the operating conditions of the mill was kept constant. These additives were added into mineral in certain ratio based on the mineral weight and the grinding has been done for a definite time at the same condition. Analysis were then conducted for their size distribution and compaction factor. Results shows that there were significant improvement in size distribution as the dosage and types of grinding additives changes. Different types of grinding additives were found only suitable for clinker grinding while other give no significant results. The results obtained showed that with the addition of grinding additives can improve the grindability by decreasing agglomeration and increase breakage and hence, reducing ball coating Industrials application of grinding additives also give significant improvement in terms of throughput and size distributions.