THE KINETICS OF FINE GRINDING IN AN ANNULAR BALL MILL

The grinding principles of the annular ball mill have been studied using the mass balance approach. Heterogeneous breakage rate was the characteristic behaviour observed. The non-linearity arises partly from the operating parameters, the slurry rheology and the spatial distribution of particles. The degree of non-linearity could be minimized in some instances by a careful choice of the operating conditions. In contrast to the frequent assumption used in the literature, the breakage functions were observed to be non-normalizable in most cases. The comminution products were simulated using the kinetic parameters obtained by a simple linear approximation technique. A fairly good correlation was obtained between the experimental and the calculated product size distributions.