Reduction and fracture analysis of a tungsten ore and its use for fundamental liberation modelling

Paper in proceeding, 2016

Nowadays there are numerous tungsten applications and uses, due to this the global demand for tungsten has increased the extraction and production of this rare earth mineral. The liberation of tungsten is achieved by using comminution equipment, e.g. crushers, there is a lack of knowledge how tungsten is liberated by means of compressive breakage. Even though it is possible to use find comminution models for explaining the size reduction, there is also need to implement a mineral liberation model into theses comminution models. This paper will focus on a fundamental model that combine and integrate the size reduction with the mineral liberation in early stages of the breakage process. This work focuses on analysing the liberation characteristics that occur by means of interparticle breakage. The work includes two parts, firstly the integration of the measured data into a size reduction model, and secondly a reflexion and understanding of the liberation and fracture mechanism during the breakage. Results from the work show that in order to address multi component modelling it is necessary to focus on controlling factors such as dominating quantities of different minerals, breakage mechanism in different bounded minerals and how this is connected with the liberation of them. It also was observed that the model could be used for determining the choice of the compression ratio in crushing for optimising liberation.