Procedure for determination of ball Bond work index in the commercial operations

The Bond ball mill grindability test is run in a laboratory until a circulating load of 250% is developed. It provides the Bond Ball Mill Work Index which expresses the resistance of material to ball milling. This happens after 7–10 grinding cycles, which shows that the procedure is a lengthy and complex one and is therefore susceptible to procedural errors. Starting from the first-order grinding kinetics defined by means of the Bond ball mill, this paper discusses a simplified procedure for a rapid determination of the work index by just two grinding tests. The applicability of the simplified procedure has been proved on samples of copper and Iron ores that are located in Iran. The values obtained by this procedure do not differ by more than 7% from those obtained in the standard Bond test.