A Model to Predict Wear Rate of Shell Liners in Tumbling Mills - The Sarcheshmeh Copper Complex and Gol-E-Gohar Mining and Industrial Company SAG Mill Cases

Currently, in mineral processing plants most often high throughput SAG mills are used in comminution circuits. Since shut down of these units could result in production stoppage, the availability time of these equipment are of prime importance. One of the main parameters involved in shut down time is the liner replacement time. Hence, models which are able to predict liner life time could have a significant effect on the performance of the operation. In the past decades, various models have been proposed to estimate the liner wear rate, but due to their empirical nature they could only be used in a certain operating conditions. In this research, a phenomenological model which could predict the liner wear rate considering parameters such as operating conditions, liner hardness, pressure on the lifter, relative velocity of particles and mill shell was proposed and tested. Availability to industrially measured liner profiles data during the liner life time at the Sarcheshmeh and Gol-E-Ghohar SAG mills provided a solid base to calibrate and validate the model. The results showed that the model predictions and the actual measurements of the liner wear rate of SAG mills correlate well at Sarcheshmeh (R2=0.94) and Gol-E-Ghohar (R2=0.97) concentrators.