Modelling Reduction and Liberation for Rare Earth Minerals Applications

Other conference contribution, 2016

Due to the raising global demand for rare earth minerals there is an increased need for development of more efficient extraction processes of such materials. Comminution models commonly predict size reduction with the focus on a single component, but few models integrate the mineral composition. This paper focuses on defining a multi component model, combining the size reduction and the mineral liberation. In this study, compressive breakage and liberation analysis experiments were conducted on a Tantalum ore. The work is divided into two stages, firstly the methodology of fitting measured data into a size reduction model, and secondly the multi component modelling where the liberation results are integrated into the size reduction model. Results from the work show that in order to address multi component modelling it is necessary to focus on dominating factors such as dominating quantities of different minerals. It was also seen that the model can be used for determining the choice of compression ratio in crushing for optimizing liberation.