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Grinding Optimization
How do I track the Mill Composition & Residence time?
How do I track the Mill Composition & Residence time?

An overview of how to use the Material Model's Grinding Circuit Virtual Sensors

Niel Knoblauch avatar
Written by Niel Knoblauch
Updated over a week ago

Challenge

Flow meters and densitometers are limited in where they can be installed. Grinding Circuits present a notable challenge, as it's not easy to fit such measurements inside or right at the discharge end of a mill.

How many fines or coarse ore is inside my Mill? What % of the Mill Weight is made up of water? What is the current mean residence time?
Significant uncertainty around these questions means that the stabilising control of a Mill is inherently limit – giving rise to unstable performance.

Our Solution

IntelliSense.io's solution to this challenge is to employ the brains.app Material Model with the Grinding Application, to provide circuit-specific Virtual Sensors.

The Material Model makes use of dynamic mass and volume balances to infer flow rates and slurry properties in streams that are not directly measured. For the Grinding Circuit, it keeps track of the inventory in the Mills and other process units. It then provides Virtual Sensors that are updated each minute. These Virtual Sensors include stream compositions, flow rates, densities, as well as the composition and residence time of the Mills.

Value

This much-needed transparency allows you to:

  • Control the Mill feed and discharge based on these Virtual Sensors

  • Stabilise and optimize the Grinding Circuit performance more directly

Dashboard Example

This Virtual Sensor's outputs can be trended using a Dashboard. Below is an example of a Dashboard showing the Material Model Virtual Sensors:

For more info, please do reach out to us via Intercom. We'd be happy to help!

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