Ceramic grinding media, which is quite high in alumina and silica content, has several key advantages over traditional steel, slag and sand.
HuaMing alumina ceramic grinding beads are quite hard and spherical so waste less energy in rounding particles. Ceramic ball has low friction and low wear rates, which means it achieves high grinding efficiency at a lower cost for coarse feeds.
Grinding media like steel, the outside is quite hard but the inside is softer so it wears a lot faster, whereas ceramic media has good mechanical integrity and maintains this characteristic as it wears.
In addition, ceramic media does not chemically or electro-chemically impact on the downstream flotation process.
“When you use steel media, for instance, it produces ferric ions, which tends to interfere with the chemistry of the particles and creates a passivating layer; this makes the particles hard to float or leach.”
“I don’t think people realise until they operate a plant without steel media just how important the chemical aspect is of downstream processing.”
“The consumption of ceramic media is much better than sand so you don’t need to have as much on hand.”
Another big advantage of ceramic media, especially in these days of escalating fuel costs, is power savings. These can range up to 20% compared with many sands.
“Using ceramic media is quite a cheap way of increasing your regrind capability. It also saves time with downstream processing by grinding to finer sizes and provides improvements in flotation and leaching afterwards.”