Study of Comminution Kinetics in an Electrofragmentation Lab-Scale Device

Abstract

A significant challenge in mineral raw materials comminution is the improvement of process energy efficiency. Conventional comminution techniques, although globally used, are far from being considered power-efficient. The use of high-voltage electric pulses in comminution is a concept that is worthy of study; despite its lack of industrial-scale validation after several decades of lab-scale research, it seems promising as a pretreatment leading to energy savings. In this article, the Cumulative Kinetic Model methodology is adapted to model the comminution effect in an electrofragmentation device, and study a dunite rock ore. The results show that product particle size distribution (PSD) can be predicted with reasonable accuracy using the proposed model.

Keywords

• electrofragmentation
• comminution
• Marx generator
• modeling