General concepts

General Concepts

Each grinding calculation consist of several components that interact with each other:

• A 'project' to which each item of 'testwork' and each 'circuit' is assigned. This effectively partitions a much larger database into a manageable mine-specific data set.
• A 'Testwork' database containing a list of samples, their laboratory results and optional geological information.
  • Samples that have testwork results required to feed the selected specific energy model are combined into a 'query' table that consists of all samples capable of being simulated in the circuit model.
• A 'circuit' which acts as a container for two model components:
  • A 'specific energy model' that estimates how much energy is required to grind ore from a feed size to a product size.
  • One or more 'mill power draw models' that estimates how much power is evolved by a mill of a particular geometry under specified operating conditions.

Example structure, SAB model

This is an example diagram explaining the different components of a project consisting of a batch of test results and a Bond-based SAG mill-ball mill circuit model.

Different 'circuit' configurations can be run against the 'query' result. For example, two different circuits can have different sized mills. Different variations on the 'specific energy model' can test different product sizes or types of circuit configurations.