Abstract
There is no doubt about the practical interest of Fred Bond’s methodology in the field of comminution, not only in tumbling mills design and operation but also in mineral raw materials grindability characterization. Increasing energy efficiency in comminution operations globally is considered a significant challenge involving several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, the Bond work index (wi) is considered a critical parameter at an industrial scale, provided that power consumption in comminution operations accounts for up to 40% of operational costs. Despite this, the variability of wi when performing the ball mill Bond’s standard test is not always understood enough. This study shows the results of a variability analysis (a 33 factorial design) performed to elucidate the influence on wi of several parameters obtained from the particle size distribution (PSD) in feed and product. Results showed a clear variability in the work and grindability indexes with some of the variables considered.
Highlights
There is no doubt about the importance of Fred Bond’s methodology [1,2,3,4,5] and its practical value in the field of comminution, in tumbling mills design and operation and in the characterization of mineral raw materials grindability
The composite sample was homogenized and divided, checking by particle size distribution (PSD) analysis that aliquots verified the requirements in each case (Figures S1–S27 at the Supplementary Materials)
The procedure to carry out the Bond grindability test [1,18] is described below
Summary
There is no doubt about the importance of Fred Bond’s methodology [1,2,3,4,5] and its practical value in the field of comminution, in tumbling mills design and operation and in the characterization of mineral raw materials grindability. In the study presented by Mosher and Tague [9], they addressed the variability of Bond test results independent of sampling or procedural variation They discussed test sensitivity and detailed test procedures to maximize the accuracy and precision of the test, concluding that the Bond tests within one laboratory showed repeatability of less than ±4% at two standard deviations. They recommended not to report Bond work indices beyond 0.1 kWh/t, based on the precision of the test and suggested that determination of the reproducibility of wi can be improved significantly by accurate determination of the fresh feed and product PSD. Rodríguez et al [11] studied this extent, showing that the methodology used for F80 and P80 determination by interpolation significantly affects wi calculation
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