Outogenius! The testing of autogenous grinding in laboratory and pilot scale and the design of full scale comminution circuits

The design of autogeneous grinding mills is difficult because of the variability of their grinding media; when steel balls or rods are used as in SAG or non-autogenous machines, calculations can be much more reliable because--obviously--the characteristics of the media are constant, or predictable. But when the grinding medium and the feed material are one and the same thing, the variations in the physical characteristics of the feed multiply the design problems, especially in the case of autogenous primary mills. Now, however, researchers from Outokumpu, Finland, working backwards after years of studying full scale autogenous production mills, are developing a special laboratory method to test the suitability of ores for Outogenius comminution, Outokumpu's own autogenous grinding process. This paper discusses the results of these new grinding machines which use ores to grind ores. The specifications of the machinery are provided along with the performance on various types of ores.