PBM of an industrial-scale vertical wet stirred media mill (HIGMill): Assessment of back-calculation and hybrid methods

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2024

Abstract

An industrial-scale vertical wet stirred media mill (HIGMill) was simulated via a population balance model (PBM). Feed and product particle size distributions (PSDs) of copper ore were measured at various steady-state conditions. The PBM incorporated 1-large–2-small-tanks model and power-law specific breakage rate function Si. Parameters of Si and three non-normalized cumulative breakage functions Bij were estimated by a back-calculation method with global optimization. In a hybrid method, breakage index tn-based Bij, obtained from laboratory drop-weight tests, were input to the optimizer to estimate Si. Results suggest that higher rotor speed, lower solids loading, and use of steel rotor vs. rubber rotor and coarser beads led to faster breakage. The back-calculation with the modified Tavares Bij achieved the best fits, whereas the hybrid method ranked third. The predictions by all models were reasonably good. We demonstrated pros/cons of the PBM approaches and their parameters' plausibility via a microhydrodynamic scaling analysis.

Identifier

85190544651 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Powder Technology

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2024.119760

e-ISSN

1873328X

ISSN

00325910

Volume

440

Fund Ref

Nanjing Institute of Technology

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