Role of dispersants in kinetics and energetics of stirred ball mill grinding

Abstract

Rheology of suspensions plays an important role in fine grinding of solids in stirred ball mills which exhibit superior performance in the sub-sieve grinding range than the conventional ball mills, in terms of both throughput and energy consumption. Addition of suitable dispersants to the slurry feed can result in a drastic reduction or even elimination of yield stress and permits higher solid loadings of the pulp. This investigation shows that size distributions of the comminuted products collapse onto essentially identical self-similar or self-preserving curves when particle size is rescaled by the median size, irrespective of the presence or absence of dispersants. The median size therefo..