Grinding quartz sand into fine particles is a necessary preparation for beneficiation and purification of quartz sand. The commonly used quartz sand grinding equipment includes ball mills and rod mills, so is it better to use ball mills or rod mills for grinding quartz sand? This article will provide the answer.
The main difference between ball mills and rod mills lies in the grinding medium. The grinding medium of ball mills is steel balls, while the grinding medium of rod mills is steel rods. It is this grinding medium that causes a significant difference in the grinding effect between the two.
The contact surface between the steel rod in the cylinder of the rod mill and the material is in a straight line, belonging to line contact. Therefore, its discharge particle size is relatively coarse. The characteristic of the rod mill is to first grind the coarse minerals, and then grind the smaller minerals, effectively avoiding the phenomenon of over crushing.
The steel balls in the cylinder of the ball mill come into contact with the material at points, and regardless of the size of the ore block, a uniform grinding strategy is adopted to reduce the particle size of the material, resulting in a finer discharge particle size of the ball mill.
In the process of quartz sand processing, it is usually not necessary to grind it to a very fine size, usually 40-100 mesh, so it is better to use a rod grinder to grind quartz sand.
So, besides the reason for grinding fineness, what other reasons make us choose to use a rod mill to grind quartz sand? In summary, there are mainly the following points:
1. Low cost
Rod mills can sometimes replace short end cone crushers for fine crushing operations. When processing quartz sand, using a rod mill can grind 19-25mm (or even 32mm) of ore to 6-10 mesh, which is simpler in configuration and lower in cost compared to using a short cone crusher and a mining screen to form a closed circuit, and can simplify the dust removal in the crushing workshop.
2. Equipped with scrubbing function
Quartz ore itself has a high content of impurities, and many mud impurities are attached to the surface of quartz sand. For the removal of these impurities, a scrubbing machine is usually used to first scrub the quartz sand. The rod mill has a certain scrubbing effect during the grinding process, which can remove some surface impurities while grinding, providing convenience for subsequent sorting and purification operations.
3. Large production capacity
The output of rod mills is usually larger than that of ball mills, and the processing capacity of quartz sand beneficiation plants is generally above 500tpd. When processing the same amount of quartz raw ore, the working efficiency of rod mills is much higher than that of ball mills. Therefore, from a production perspective, rod mills are also more suitable for grinding quartz sand.
4. Uniform particle size
The feeding and discharging device of the rod mill has good controllability, and can match suitable grinding bodies based on the actual grinding materials of the user. The material is ground in a line contact manner, making the discharge particle size of the material more uniform.
5. Adjustable discharge fineness
The internal adjustment device of the rod mill is equipped with an internal adjustment device, which can adjust the discharge particle size through simple operation. In addition, a screening device can be added for the material to ensure dual control, which not only ensures that it cannot be ground, but also ensures the accuracy of qualified products.
In addition to the above five aspects, the brittle nature of quartz also determines that rod mills are more suitable for it, and ball mills do not perform as well as rod mills in handling brittle materials. So, the selection of grinding equipment should not only consider the characteristics of the grinding equipment itself, but also comprehensively judge based on the properties of the materials. Choosing the wrong equipment may result in low work efficiency and increased costs, so it is better to use a rod mill for grinding quartz sand.
