Modeling breakage rates of coarse particles in ball mills

Breakage rates of coarse particles in ball mills generally follow non-first-order kinetics and the distribution products from batch milling are often characterized by significant contributions of abrasion besides breakage by impact, which are not well described using traditional size-mass balance formulations. Under such conditions, particles are often subject to impacts of insufficient magnitude to produce breakage in each stressing event, so that they are broken by a combination of abrasion and impact and also particles undergo weakening due to unsuccessful stressing events. The paper presents a mathematical model of batch grinding which takes into account the distribution of stressing energies in the mill, the distribution of fracture energies of particles contained in the charge, describing breakage by impacts from grinding media producing catastrophic breakage, abrasion and weakening from repeated impacts. The model has been applied to describe the rate of disappearance of two materials in batch grinding with good results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.