Non Contact Acoustics Measurement and Validation of SAG Mill Operation (9e67a48f-a988-4e1a-b466-2b273ec64d48)

"Semi Autogenous (SAG) mills exhibit complex interactions between the competing processes occurring inside them. Traditional practice is to measure the operation of the SAG mill at an operating point in terms of its load, power draw, steel load, ore throughput rate, water addition rate and more recently the feed size distribution. However significant departures of operating conditions can occur due to changes, for example, in ore hardness, the quest for higher throughputs and mill internal geometry.Fundamental to SAG mill operation are the internal processes that ensure that a given ore throughput and discharge grind size are obtained and maintained. These processes can be measured using non-contact acoustic emissions from the SAG mills which utilise the information rich noise that is generated by the grinding, flow and charge movement inside a mill.Non-contact acoustic in-mill measurements can be used for the validation of discrete element modelling (DEM). The approach being reported in this paper is to model the individual physical processes and then to simulated the assemblage of a physical mill."