The effect of different parameters on the power draw of miduk copper concentrator sag mill

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate on the effect of different parameters such as rotational speed, hold-up and load solid percent on the power draw of Miduk SAG mill. Miduk copper concentrator is located in Kerman Province, Iran, and its size reduction stage includes one gyratory crusher which feeds one SAG mill (9.75 dia.(m) * 3.88 length(m)) following two parallel ball mills (5 dia.(m) × 7 lenght(m)). After SAG mill, a trommel screen produces two over and under size materials which the oversize part is circulated into SAG mill and undersize reports to hydrocyclone for further process. An experimental design was implemented in this work using d × 7 software for the above three mentioned parameters. As there is of course some effective factors which are significant on the mills performance such as feed hardness (grindability), liners conditions, but due to the existing variation in feed distribution and grind ability of feed, this decision was made to work on these two factors and accordingly the sampling and necessary analysis were performed. Due to similar technical reasons, it was not possible to change the ball load in SAG mill, as well. The results obtained from this work showed that optimized conditions for mill speed, hold-up and solid percent would be %68.05 of critical speed, 80 ton and %75, respectively.