Isolating the impact of pebble recycling on AG/SAG circuit: a data-driven method

Other conference contribution, 2021

Recycle pebble crushing is widely deployed in autogenous grinding (AG) and semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill circuits. The application of pebble crushers can significantly boost circuit throughput by reducing critical size pebbles that potentially cause a bottle-neck in a primary grinding operation. Previous research shows that by controlling the cone crusher operational parameters, the product particle size distribution (PSD) can be altered during the process. However, no full-scale tests have been conducted to investigate whether the changes of the pebbles crusher’s product PSD, lead to a higher performance of the SAG circuit. The purpose of this study is to isolate and systematically investigate the impact of the recycling load and pebble crusher operational settings on the total grinding circuit performance. The case study is considered to be a time series problem, and its outcome allows one to narrow down key operating conditions for future optimizations.