Ore liberation modelling by minerals topological evaluation

Liberation of valuable minerals from multiphase ores is one of the main goals of a size reduction process. Great importance is thus assumed by models able to give a detailed provisional description of the ore liberationo̧mminution process. In the definition of these models, the hypotheses usually adopted for ore textural and structural characterisation are dramatically simplified due to the great difficulty of translating and incorporating such characteristics in numerical form. This paper describes the possibilities offered by a full colour multispectral image analysis system for evaluating the liberation characteristics of an ore. The procedures and the related algorithms have been developed in order to permit a full recognition and morphological modelling of the different mineralogical species inside the images acquired by optical microscopy. A topological map containing a reduced body of data is related with the liberation characteristics of minerals. The system incorporates all the procedures able both to process the previously derived information and to test different comminution strategies based on the topological assessment of the species and the selected theoretical comminution net.