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How can I keep my Mill Charge at its optimal state?
How can I keep my Mill Charge at its optimal state?

How the Grinding Application stabilises your mill at its optimal Load and Charge density

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

Challenge

When it comes to the operation of Grinding circuits, operations teams have two main questions:

  1. At which Mill Load should I operate my mills?

  2. How should I feed the grinding circuit to keep it their, even as the feed properties change?

These are not easy questions to answer - particularly not with feed properties and conditions in the mills changing all the time.

As such, Metallurgists and Operators often get it wrong: either operating their Grinding circuit in a conservative (e.g. underloaded) state, and/or constantly wrestling with an unstable process - bouncing between pushing production and pulling back to avoid overloading their mill.

This leads to suboptimal throughput and inconsistent product PSD.

Our Solution

IntelliSense.io's solution to this challenge is twofold:

  1. Dynamically determine the optimal Mill Load operating point with the Dynamic Overload Threshold, and

  2. Determine optimal solids and water feed rates in real-time with the Mill Load Stabiliser.

For more on the Dynamic Overload Threshold (point 1), have a look at this Help article. The Mill Load stabiliser attempts to do the following things at the same time:

  • Maximise solids throughput

  • Keep the Mill Load near the optimal setpoint

  • Keep the Mill charge density in check

The below image shows how the Density alert is triggered, at which point the Mill Load Stabiliser will adjust the feed water to make sure that it stays within its target range.

Figure 1: Screenshot of a Grinding Application Dashboard, showing recommended setpoints and alerts generated by the Mill Load Stabiliser.

The Grinding Application both determines the optimal Mill Load, and helps Operators keep their grinding circuit there - whilst maximising throughput and stabilising density. These update in real-time, as the feed properties change. Solving Metallurgists' and Operators' operational headaches when it comes to their Grinding circuit.

Value

The optimal Mill Load recommendations, along with the real-time stabilisation means that Operators can:

  • Maximise their Grinding circuit throughput at all times, irrespective of feed

  • Reduce downtime by ensuring that their circuit operate within constraints at all times

  • Achieve their product PSD target more consistently, as their whole circuit runs in a stable way

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

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