MATERIAL BED COMPRESSION EXPERIMENTS AND THE EXAMINATION OF THE BULK DENSITY OF THE PRODUCT

Abstract

Comminution of white fused alumina (WFA) and white fused mullite (WFM) is a challenging task, as these materials have very high hardness and compression strength and are also very abrasive. Selection of the best comminution process for each particle size range thus has great importance. For this, first we must understand the effects of different types of stresses and comminution methods used for the comminution of WFA and WFM. In this article a comparison of particle size distribution and bulk density of different fractions and the influence of the applied pressure is carried out on the product of material bed compression and traditional single particle compression by roller crusher. Comminution experiments were carried out in a laboratory scale piston press to achieve material bed compression like in HPGR technology, and in an industrial scale roller crusher. The results showed that the products of the two comminution methods have a significant difference on particle size distribution and the fraction’s bulk density on both materials. The effective amount (<1 mm) of the fractured particles for WFA was 72% and 74% for WFM with material bed compression comminution and with single particle compression 30% for WFA and 28% for WFM. The highest growth in the bulk density compared to the roller crusher product was achieved by material bed compression by the piston press, with 12.3% on the 0.15 0.3 mm WFA fraction.