Documented Fortran programs for ball-mill modelling

CIM Bulletin, Vol. 77, No. 870, 1984

D. LAGUITTpN and F. FLAMENT, Mineral Processing Laboratory, CANMET, Ottawa, Ontario, R. SPRING, Noranda Research Centre Montreal, Quebec, V.K. GUPTA and D. HODOUIN, GRAAIM, Universite Laval, Quebec City, Quebec

The CANMET SPOC project aims at inducing progress in process evaluation and optimization by developing user-oriented software based on state-of-the-art theory. The present work is the result of a joint effort by CANMET, Noranda Mines and Universite Laval to develop two computer packages: one (RTD) to calculate the residence time distribution that best describes the material transport through the mill, the other (FINDBS) to estimate the rate of breakage and distribution function of the population balance model in a ball mill. The RTD package can handle data from various experimental methods (impulse or complex tracer feed, with or without recycling, etc...). The FINDBS package provides options for the functional description of both model parameters B and S. The full detail of the methods and programs appears in a users guide. The program capabilities and several sample runs are presented.

Keywords: Computer applications, Ball mills, Mineral dressing, SPOC project, Modelling, Computer simulation, Grinding