Comminution Cost and Energy Efficient Strategies - A Top priority for Mining Companies

Comminution is the key step in entire mineral processing value chain as the run of mine ore boulders are reduced in their size to feed into secondary crusher to achieve desired mineral content in the processed ore. Cost and energy effective strategies in comminution process is a need of the hour for the mining company as the process consumes more than half of the overall energy consumption for mineral beneficiation. The article revolves around the cost effective and energy efficient strategies adopted by mining companies in comminution process, with citation of few case studies. It speaks about the challenges faced by mining firms for ore crushing & grinding and mitigating steps to overcome such complications. It also explicates procurement strategies followed by mining industry to improve their productivity beside reducing energy consumption. The process of crushing and grinding the mined ore to reduce the particulate materials from coarse feed size to fine product size as required by the downstream user is termed as comminution. It accounts for 53% of the mine site energy consumption, which is the highest energy step in mining operation. Comminution represents minimum of 10% of the mine site production cost and It consumes around 3-4% of the total electric power being generated in the globe. Comminution energy includes energy directly used in size reduction and energy used in manufacturing of comminution consumables. Increasing prices around comminution have highlighted the importance of energy efficient solutions.