Using piston-die press tests for preliminary sizing and selection of a high-pressure grinding roll

摘要

Industry practice for high-pressure grinding roll (HPGR) assessment and sizing relies on tests using pilot-scale machines with 0.7-1.0 m roll diameters. Typically 1-10 t of sample are required, depending on the level of study and resource complexity. This is challenging during early-stage development, which hinders incorporating HPGR into designs. With support from the Canadian Mining Industry Research Organization, researchers at the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering at The University of British Columbia developed bench-scale piston-die press tests (PPTs) that correlate to pilot- and full-scale HPGRs. This paper describes a new regression model to estimate the HPGR-specific throughput rate using both PPT results and an HPGR database. A case study is presented to show how the current PPT method is used for engineering studies.