Grinding media quality assurance for the （研磨介质的质量保证）.pdf

MOEMA, J.S., PAPO, M.J., SLABBERT, G.A., and ZIMBA, J. Grinding media quality assurance for the comminution of gold ores. World Gold Conference 2009, The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 2009. Grinding media quality assurance for the comminution of gold ores J.S. MOEMA, M.J. PAPO, G.A. SLABBERT and J. ZIMBA Mintek The current global economic climate has adversely affected the resources industry in general. For the gold mining industry, even though the gold price has been stable as compared to other resources, there is still a need to cut costs even further in order to be profitable and sustainable. Of all the costs that are associated with mining, comminution of ore accounts for the majority. Comminution costs constitute mainly electricity, grinding balls and liners. Of these three components, grinding balls form the major portion of the consumable costs, and can be as high as 40%–45% of the total. As a result, proper grinding ball selection is a key consideration towards reducing mining costs. This paper discusses quality control procedures that can be conducted in order to select the best grinding balls for a particular application. Keywords: grinding balls, forged, semi steel, hardness, chemical, metallography, wear testing, impact test Introduction Steel grinding media fail if there is a significant variation One of the basic operations in minerals processing is in chemical composition, hardness and microstructure of grinding of the ore to the point where valuable minerals are