This aim of this project is to identify and test ways to reduce total comminution energy at existing sites by 20% or more.

This project has several themes:

• Improve the use of existing equipment – typically crushers, screens, Ag/SAG and ball mills
• Supplement or replace existing equipment with more eco-efficient equipment
• Process less material by liberation and rejection of gangue
• Substantially reduce development times and development costs of new comminution equipment
  

These themes have a high degree of synergy:

1. Making better use of what we already have has an excellent track record with JKSimMet and Mine to Mill projects typically able to achieve 5-15% reductions in overall comminution energy at existing sites. These methods use relatively simple models. Leading edge, computationally intensive techniques will be used to develop enhanced mathematical process models which will allow consumable geometry (mill and crusher liners and media distributions) to be optimised for both wear and ore breakage.
   
   
2. There is considerable scope for using more energy efficient comminution equipment. Several promising equipment types (constrained breakage crushers – HPGR and others, stirred mills – Tower and Isa Mills) are already available commercially. These will form the main focus. The project will develop ways to realistically assess substitution of one or more of these pieces of equipment for existing equipment in terms of eco-efficiency and economic performance for a particular type of ore. The assessment process will bring together current state of the art performance measurement (from the AMIRA P9 project and CSRP site work) and the advanced computational techniques mentioned in 1. It is also proposed that emerging comminution technologies will be evaluated in an AMIRA project.
   
   
3. If clean gangue can be rejected at a coarser size than at present, then the required comminution energy can be reduced (possibly substantially) and there may be opportunities to reduce environmental impact and in some cases to generate by-products. Crushing, screening and sorting will be the dominant types of equipment. Because of ever-cheaper computational power, we now have access to much more flexible sensing and sorting methods. The project will examine sensing options and ways to promote coarse liberation – probably by grain boundary breakage.
   
   
4. The development of each of the commercially available devices mentioned in 2 has required more than 20 years of sustained effort at substantial cost. This theme will use the same advanced computational techniques to develop a Virtual Comminution Machine. This tool will be useful for optimisation of existing equipment but its major contribution will be to substantially reduce the cost and time for each development cycle of a new comminution device. The VCM development will include development of a generic comminution model which can be calibrated from ore testing. A possible complementary activity within this thread would be the identification and preliminary evaluation of emerging comminution technologies. Ideally, such a device would make better use of comminution energy and promote coarse liberation.

Contact Information
Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Qld Australia 4068
Phone:+61 7 3365 5888
Fax:    +61 7 3365 5999
Email: jkmrc@uq.edu.au