Minerals in Operation

Operation Stages
The operating stages in minerals processing have remained the same for
thousands of years. Of course we have come far in development of equipment and
processes since then, but the hard, abrasive and inhomogeneous mineral crystals
have to be treated in special ways in order to extract maximum value out of each

Minerals in
Operation
size fraction.
The operation pattern below has been used since the days of “mineralis antiqua”

PROTECTION

SIZE
FRONT REDUCTION
ENRICHMENT UPGRADING
SERVICE AND
CONTROL

MATERIALS HANDLING

Front service: Starting point of mineral processing

Size reduction & control: Processes to produce requested size distributions
from feed material
Enrichment: Processes to improve value of minerals by washing
and/or separation
Upgrading: Processes to produce requested end products from
value and waste minerals.
Materials Handling: Operations for moving the processes forward with a
minimum of flow disturbances
Protection: Measures to protect the process environment above
from wear and emissions of dust and sound

Operation – Dry or Wet ?

Dry processing Wet processing

• When no water is needed for In all other cases due to:
processing • Better efficiency
• When no water is allowed for • More compact installation
processing • No dusting
Note! Wear rate is generally higher in wet processing!

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 Minerals in Operation
Mining and Quarry Fronts
The mining and quarry fronts are the starting points for recovery of rock and
mineral values from surface and underground deposits.
Operations are drilling (blasting), primary crushing (optional) and materials
Minerals in
Operation

handling, dry and wet.

Mining and quarrying

Open pit

Underground
Natural Fronts
In the glacial, alluvial and marine fronts nature has done most of the primary size
reduction work.
Raw material such as gravel, sand and clay are important for processing of
construction ballast, metals and industrial mineral fillers.
Operations are materials handling (wet and dry) and front crushing (optional).

Glacial
Glacial sand and gravel occur in areas which are – or have been – covered by
ice. The material is rounded and completely unsorted with an heterogeneous size
distribution which ranges from boulders larger than 1 m (3 ft) down to silt (2-20
microns). Clay contamination is concentrated in well defined layers.

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 Minerals in Operation

Minerals in
Operation
Alluvial
The size of alluvial sand and gravel depends on the flow velocity of the water,
among other things. Normally the maximum size is around 100 mm (4”). Alluvial
sand and gravel have a homogeneous size distribution and larger particles often
have high silica content. The clay content is often high, normally in the range of
5 to 15 %. Alluvial fronts are in certain areas hosting gold, tin and precious
stones.

Marine
Marine sand and gravel often have a more limited size distribution than other
types of sand and gravel. The minerals in marine sand and gravel have survived
thousands – or even millions of years – of natural attrition, from erosion in the
mountain ranges and grinding during transport down to the sea. The particles have
become well rounded and the clay content is extremely low. Marine fronts are in
certain areas hosting heavy minerals like hematite, magnetite, rutile a.o.

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 Minerals in Operation
Size Reduction

Crushing of rock and minerals

By tonnage this is by far the largest process operation in minerals processing. The
goal is to produce rock or (more seldom) mineral fractions to be used as rock fill
Minerals in
Operation

or ballast material for concrete and asphalt production. Quality parameters are
normally strength, size and shape. The size fractions, see below, are priced
according to defined size intervals and can be reached by crushing only, see
section 3.
PRIMARY
GYRATORY CONE CRUSHER
CRUSHER SECONDARY
IMPACTORS

Product value

CONE
CRUSHERS CRUSHER
TERTIARY

JAW VSI
CRUSHER

>1000 >500 >100 >80 64 32 22 16 11 8 4 0 Size mm

Crushing and grinding of ore and minerals

Size reduction of ores is normally done in order to liberate the value minerals
from the host rock. This means that we must reach the liberation size, normally in
the interval 100 – 10 micron, see value curve 1.
If the raw material is a single mineral (Calcite, Feldspar a.o.) the value normally
lays in the production of very fine powder (filler), see value curve 2.
In order to maximise the value in size reduction of rock and minerals, see below,
we need both crushing and grinding in various combinations, see section 3.

PRIMARY GYRATORY
CRUSHER

CONE
CRUSHER AG/SAG
1.
VERTIMILL

MILLS
ROD
2.
CRUSHERS / IMPACTORS

BALL

VIBRATING
PEBBLE
MILL
JAW
CRUSHER VSI
100 micron

Size
8

1m 100 mm 1 0 mm 1 mm 100 micron 10 micron 1 micron

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 Minerals in Operation
Size Control
Neither crushers nor grinding mills are very precise when it comes to the correct
sizing of the end products. The reason is to find partly in the variation of the
mineral crystals compounds (hard-soft, abrasive – non abrasive), partly in the
design and performance of the equipment.

Minerals in
Operation
Size control is the tool for improvement of the size fractions in the process
stages and in the final products.
For the coarser part of the process, screens are used (in practise above 1-2mm).
In the finer part we have to use classification with spiral classifiers and/or
hydrocyclones, see section 4.

100 micron
8

Size 1m 10 mm 10 mm 1 mm 100 micron 10 micron 1 micron

Enrichment – Washing
Washing is the simplest method of enrichment used to improve the value of rock
and mineral fractions from sand size and upwards. Removing of surface impurities
like clay, dust, organics or salts is often a must for a saleable product.
Different techniques are used depending on how hard these impurities are
attached to the rock or mineral surface, see section 5.

Washing using
Wet screens Scrubbers Attrition cells Gravity beds

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 Minerals in Operation
Enrichment – Separation
Most value minerals (both metallic and industrial) are priced by their purity. After
liberation by size reduction and size control all minerals are free to be separated
from each other.
Minerals in
Operation

Depending on the properties of the individual minerals they can be recovered by

different methods of separation, see section 5.
Gravimetric Flotation Magnetic Leaching

N S
H2SO4

Gravity
Air

• = value mineral
Upgrading
After the enrichment operation we end up with a value product (concentrate) and a
non-value product (tailings).
These products are probably not sellable nor disposable due to the content of
process water, particle size, or chemical composition.
By upgrading we mean the methods of increasing the value of these products by
sedimentation, mechanical dewatering, drying, calcining or sintering and recover-
ing the process water from the tailings, making them disposable, see section 6.

Upgrading by methods
RELATIVE COST

SINTERING

CALCINING

DRYING
DEWATERING
BY TUBE
PRESSES
DEWATERING BY
PRESSURE FILTERS
DEWATERING BY VACUUM FILTERS
DEWATERING BY SCREENS
DEWATERING BY SPIRALS
SEDIMENTATION

Size 100 mm 10 mm 1 mm 100 micron 10 micron 1 micron

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 Minerals in Operation
Materials Handling
Without a proper set up for materials handling no processing system will
perform. Different process stages may be in various locations, may have
various feed conditions, are on different shift cycles etc.

Minerals in
Operation
Materials handling of dry material is based on the operations of loadíng,
unloading, transportation, storing and feeding, see section 7.
Materials handling of wet material, called slurry handling is also based on the
operations of transportation (by slurry pumps and hoses), feeding (by slurry
pumps) and storage (by slurry agitation), see section 8.

Dry handling

Unload

Store ort
ort Transp
Transp

op Store

Feed
etc. op Feed

Slurry handling
rt
po

Store
ns
a

ed
Tr

Fe
op op
etc.

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 Minerals in Operation
Wear in Operation
Whenever energy in any form penetrates rock, ore or mineral, wear will appear.
There is of course a difference whether the minerals are hard or soft, small or
large, wet or dry, but wear will always be around. Both machines and structures
Minerals in
Operation

must be protected from wear using metals, polymers or compound material.

See section 9, wear in operation.

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 Minerals in Operation
Operation and Environment
If wear is dangerous for equipment and structures, dust and noise is primarily a
danger to the operators.
Dust is a problem to both equipment and operators in dry processing

Minerals in
Operation
Noise is a problem to operators both in wet and dry processing.
By tradition, the environment in mineral processing has a bad reputation.
This is now changing fast due to harder restrictions by law and harder demands
from the operators, see section 10, Operation and environment.

Operation Values
Prices for products from your operation are seldom set by yourself, but by the
market buying them. There is always a possibility to increase the income from
your operation by added values generated by the operation itself.
• By improving the output we can increase the product volumes
• By improving the quality we can increase the price of our products
• By improving the cost control we can reduce our costs of operation
• By improving the comfort for our operators we can improve motivation
and reduce disturbances in operation
This can be done by small adjustments, by improved service or by reinvest-
ment in more effective equipment, see all sections.

Added value in operation

VOLUME x PRICE – COSTS + MOTIVATION = S
Output Quality Cost Control Comfort

AVAILABILITY SIZE /
CAPITAL SECURITY
(up time) SHAPE

PURITY / ENVIRON-
CAPACITY ENERGY
RECOVERY MENT

COMPAC-
FLEXIBILITY TION / MATERIAL
RELATIONS
DENSITY

BASICS IN MINERAL PROCESSING Product Handbook 2:9