Crushing mineral processing

A. J. Lynch, Developments in Mineral Processing, Vol. 1, Crushing and Grinding Circuits Their Simulation, Optimisation, Design, and Control, Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1977, 342 pp. 

A novel comminution device, the roll press, has achieved commercial success [Schoenert, International J. Mineral Processing, 22, 401-412 (1988)]. It is used for fine crushing, replacing the function of a coarse-baU mill or of tertiary crushers. Unlike ordinary roll crushers which crush individual particles, the roll press is choke fed and acts on a thick stream or ribbon of feed. Particles are crushed mostly against other particles, so wear is veiy low. Energy efficiency is also greater than in ball mills. 

Separation processes, as could be seen from Figure 2.1, position themselves at the back end of the sequence in operations in the mineral processing flowsheet. The front-end operations has been found virtually to terminate with the liberation or the size-reduction processes involving crushing and grinding. It is important to limit the amount of size reduction to that at which adequate liberation is accomplished. The term adequacy is related to the cost involved in comminution and to performance of the concentration methods that follows. The concentration is obtained by separation processes which rely on differences in the properties of the particles, the physical and physico-chemical characteristics of minerals. In this context, it will only be relevant to refer to Table 2.5 which presents a summary of the processes along with the properties of the minerals that are exploited. 

The initial steps are similar to any other mineral extraction process. This involves crushing mineral, froth flotation, gravity concentration and other steps to obtain platinum metal concentrates that may contain about 30 to 40 wt% of platinum group metals. The concentrate is treated with aqua regia to separate soluble metals, gold, platinum, and palladium from other noble metals such as ruthenium, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and silver that remain in... 

The raw minerals mined from natural deposits comprise mixtures of different specific minerals. An early step in mineral processing is to use crushing and grinding to free these various minerals from each other. In addition, these same processes may be used to reduce the mineral particle sizes to make them suitable for a subsequent separation process. Non-ferrous metals such as copper, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, mercury, and antimony are typically produced from mineral ores containing these metals as sulfides (and sometimes as oxides, carbonates, or sulfates) [91,619,620], The respective metal sulfides are usually separated from the raw ores by flotation. Flotation processes are also used to concentrate non-metallic minerals used in other industries, such as calcium fluoride, barium sulfate, sodium and potassium chlorides, sulfur, coal, phosphates, alumina, silicates, and clays [91,619,621], Other examples are listed in Table 10.2, including the recovery of ink in paper recycling (which is discussed in Section 12.5.2), the recovery of bitumen from oil sands (which is discussed further in Section 11.3.2), and the removal of particulates and bacteria in water and wastewater treatment (which is discussed further in Section 9.4). 

In mineral processing, a slurry of crushed ore dispersed in water. 

The basic mineral processing techniques involved in the milling or concentrating of ore are crushing, then separation of the ore from the impurities... 

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