Predicting the overall specific energy requirement of crushing, high pressure grinding roll and tumbling mill circuits

In a previous paper [Morrell, S. 2008a. A method for predicting the specific energy requirement of comminution circuits and assessing their energy utilisation efficiency. Minerals Engineering 21(3), 5–9] an approach was described which enabled the specific energy of tumbling mills such as Autogenous (AG), Semi-autogenous (SAG) and ball mills to be estimated from laboratory-derived ore characterisation data. The following paper extends this approach to encompass jaw, gyratory and cone crushers as well as High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR). The technique is applied to three different comminution circuits and their overall specific energies are compared. All of the calculations involved are described in detail in an appendix.