Crushers - An Essential Part of Energy Efficient Comminution

Paper in proceeding, 2011

The importance of crushers in the mining industry declined with the predominance of SAG based circuits, but the move to consider more energy efficient circuit has caused the industry to re-consider the role of crushers. To fully understand how crushers can contribute to optimizing the energy application in comminution circuits, detailed models of process performance are required. Such models need to take into account the mechanical design factors and how the crusher performance changes in response to feed conditions, the control strategy utilized and the wear of the crusher liners. It is also critical to analyze the total circuit, not just the individual crushers. To fully understand the performance of the entire circuit, dynamic simulation should be applied. Without the holistic understanding of the total circuit and the incorporation of transient effects, the full circuit performance cannot be adequately determined and the true energy picture will not be quantified. Based on detailed mechanistic modeling of crushers by the authors and the application of dynamic simulation, the opportunities to optimize the use of crushers for energy efficiency are examined