Slurry flow in a tower mill

Tower mills are a commonly used device for fine grinding in the mineral processing industry and can be used for dry or wet-grinding applications. In wet grinding, the nature of the slurry flow plays an important role in transporting feed rock and ground fines inside the mill and also assists discharge from the mill. Operating conditions and impeller design can affect the slurry distribution within the mill with some regions of the charge potentially being drier and others saturated. To help understand the slurry distribution and transport we use a two stage modelling process. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is used to characterise the motion and distribution of the grinding media in the tower mill. The averaged voidage distribution and steady velocity field from the DEM model is then used to define a dynamic porous media in the fluid model. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method is used for modelling the fluid flow because of the free surface and the moving impeller. The one way coupled DEM/SPH model is then used to assess how the fluid distribution and flow pattern of the slurry in a tower mill are to variations in the slurry viscosity.