Design and Installation of a Particle Size Analyzer for Mineral Processing Plants

Document Type : research - paper

Authors

1 Academic Center for Education, Culture&Research (ACECR) on TMU

2 Culture&Research (ACECR) on TMU

3 of shahrood University

Abstract

Knowing the particle sizes of minerals in the mineral processing plant is one of the most important parameters in optimization of grinding systems. Currently this process is done in traditional ways by manually screening the minerals, with inevitable errors of sampling and analysis.  Furthermore, lack of online access to the results is another limitation of the current method which is significant in controlling of grinding systems. The main purpose of this project was designing and installing an intelligent analyzer of minerals sizing which could be used in mineral processing plants to remove the stated limitation of traditional method. The theoretical basis of this study is using image processing techniques by installing a particular automated camera (model Guppy036B made by Allied Technology Co. of Germany with capability of taking 60 frames per second) and transferring the taken pictures via Fire wire to a software. As particles move through the conveyor belt the taken videos turn to pictures and software recognize and measure the sizes of the particles. Then the sizes are reported as as d20, d40, d50 and d80.The other advantages of this software are capability of hourly, monthly, periodic and annual reporting. Providing empirical methods for industrial calibration of the software is the other achievement of this project. One of the important feature of this software system is determining the particle sizes of minerals in two states; cascade and on the conveyor belt. The system was successfully tested with manual and natural lighting in an alumina and iron ore mineral processing plant. After final optimization of software and hardware, the system could determine the sizing of mineral with accuracy of 97% and 96/2%for cascade and on the conveyor belt respectively.

Keywords

References

 
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Journal of Mining Engineering
Volume 7, Issue 14 - Serial Number 14
December 2012
Pages 99-105

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History

  • Receive Date: 03 November 2010
  • Accept Date: 11 May 2011

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