Benchmarking: Fimiston Ball Mills

Benchmarking: Ball Mill Power Draw - Fimiston

• Nelson, M; Valery, W; Morrell, S, Performance Characteristics and Optimisation of the Fimiston (KCGM) SAG Mill Circuit, Page 233 - 248, SAG 1996 Conference, Vancouver, Canada.
  • Diameter inside shell = 5.49 m (18 ft)
  • Diameter inside liners = 5.35 m (17.5 ft, 3.0 inch effective liner thickness)
  • Belly length inside liners (EGL) = 7.60 m (25 ft)
  • Centre-line length = 8.76 m
  • Top ball size = 80 mm

Table 5 presents results of a single ball mill survey. The survey measured motor input power. Drives are assumed to have an efficiency of 0.96 and gearbox+pinion efficiency of 0.970, so the model shell power draw is converted to motor input power by dividing by 0.9312. The predicted power draw of Example project circuit number 7 (Fimiston) using sample MLE, based on the KCGM paper published by Campbell, J. et al; 1998 AusIMM Annual Conference.

Survey	Survey Power, kW at input	Mill speed, %critical	Total load, %v/v	Pulp %solids, w/w	Morrell SAG Model, kW at input / shell	Nordberg Model, kW at input / shell
Survey 1	3,864	66.7 68.3 †	38.7	72.0	3,933 / 3,776	3,592 / 3,345

^† The appendix of the paper lists the mill speed as 12.5 RPM. The mill is fixed speed, so the %critical speed is only a function of mill effective diameter (as liners wear). Doing the math (neglecting the balls) gives a 68.3% critical speed.

The ball mill belly length can be achieved with a 18 degree head angle and 1.9 m trunnion diameter.