Experience Using Rubber Liners In Autogenous Grinding Mills At The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company

Introduction Wet autogenous grinding is utilized in three iron ore concentrating plants operated by the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (CCI). This paper will trace some of the development in converting from the use of metal grinding mill liners to the use of rubber and will update the current performance of rubber liners in these applications. The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company is a natural resources firm with major interests in iron ore mining and processing and oil and gas contract drilling. The company also has interests in oil shale, uranium, forest products, and Great Lakes shipping. The three operations discussed in this paper are the Empire and Tilden Mines on the Marquette Iron Range in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the Sherman Mine in northern Ontario, Canada. The Empire Iron Mining Partnership is managed by The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company and is owned by Inland Steel, McLouth Steel, The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, and International Harvester. The Tilden Iron Mining Partnership is also managed by The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company and is owned by Algoma Steel Corporation, Ltd., Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, Steel Company of Canada, Wheeling-Pittsburgh, and Sharon Steel Corporation. The Sherman Mine is a joint venture managed by Cliffs of Canada, Ltd. and owned by Dominion Foundries and Steel Company, Ltd. and Tetapaga Mining Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. The concentrators at all three mines utilize two stage autogenous grinding. Empire and Sherman process magnetic iron ores (Table 1) and utilize magnetic, hydraulic, and flotation concentration methods. Tilden processes an oxidized iron ore (martite, goethite, and hematite) and utilizes a selective-flocculation desliming and flotation concentration flowsheet. Final grind particle sizes are 90% -325M (43k) at Sherman, 90% -500M (25,u ) at Empire and 85% -500M (25 µ) at Tilden. Developmental History The success of using rubber mill linings in Scandinavia led to the first rubber mill lining used by CCI. It was installed in a conventional primary ball mill at Republic Mine in 1964 as reported by Lindroos (1970). This was followed by additional rubber liners for both primary and regrind ball mills. Generally these rubber linings provided about twice the service life as compared to the Type I Ni-hard liners previously used. Grinding efficiency of rubber was found to